The Shanghai Education Commission (SEC) said only around 20 percent of the city's 178,000 college students who are expected to graduate this June have secured job or enrolled for further studies.

It's a disappointing figure, said SEC Deputy Director Lu Jing. But he stressed that the proportion is actually higher than last year's figure.

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As Shanghai is undergoing structural reform and adjustments, Lu said the employment situation for college graduates has not made much improvement since last year.

Lu said graduating students taking up financial majors will find it hard to find work after June as the financial industry of Shanghai has contracted.

Graduates in history, literature, sports, law, and art will also have difficulty securing jobs, he added.

"The most sought-after will be engineering graduates," Lu said.

Employers will continue to be gender-biased as Lu said women will like find it more difficult to get a job than men even as women this year account for more than 50 percent of the graduating students in Shanghai.

Shanghai Student Affairs Center Deputy Director Tian Lei said at least 9,500 companies offering a combined 95,000 jobs for college graduates have registered with the center. But that is still 83,000 short for the expected 178,000 graduates in June.

The number of Shanghai students expected to graduate this June is just a fraction of the 7.27 million college students who are expected to graduate this year. The figure is 280,000 more than last year's, education officials said.

Authorities have already urged incoming college students to take up college majors that will land them jobs when they graduate. Experts said the problem with China's rising unemployment rate is not that there are not enough jobs in the country but that college majors do not actually address the demand of the industries.