In the spring of 2026, teacher recruitment announcements were released in various regions. Some young people preparing to "take the civil service exam" soon discovered that familiar entry points were narrowing: Hubei Province is openly recruiting 2,740 middle and primary school teachers, while Jiangxi Province plans to recruit 1,190 middle and primary school teachers. Recruitment is still ongoing, but positions are no longer as universally available as in previous years, with increasing disparities between counties, school stages, and subjects.
Almost simultaneously, macro data sent a clearer signal. Statistics from the Ministry of Education show that in 2025, the number of full-time teachers at all levels and types of schools nationwide was 18,701,000, down approximately 150,000 from 18,851,000 in 2024. This marks the second consecutive year of decline in the number of full-time teachers nationwide. Over the past twenty years, the chain of "student growth - school expansion - teacher supplementation" has been relatively stable, but it is now reversing on a large scale for the first time.
However, summarizing these changes as "surplus of teachers" obscures the real issues at play. A primary school in a county seat may not replace retiring staff, while a neighboring new district's middle school struggles to find a science teacher; a rural school may have an aging teaching staff, while an urban school faces pressure from rapidly increasing enrollment; positions for language, mathematics, and foreign languages are highly competitive, but it is still difficult to find teachers for subjects like mental health, special education, information technology, and artificial intelligence from the existing pool.
The main contradiction in teacher supply and demand has shifted from "are there enough people" to "can people appear in the correct grade, region, and position".
Turning Point Appears in Total Number of Teachers
Population Shock Wave Reaches Elementary Schools
The decline in the total number of teachers is not primarily due to a sudden shift in recruitment policies, but rather the impact of changes in birth rates starting to permeate the education system. After a brief rebound in 2016, the birth rate has continued to decline, with the effects first being felt in kindergartens, then primary schools, and subsequently spreading to middle schools, high schools, and universities. Due to differences in the length of schooling and enrollment rates at each stage, this is not a synchronized decline, but rather a "slow-moving train" that advances along each stage.
Preschool education has been the first to feel the pressure. The number of full-time teachers in kindergartens nationwide decreased from 3.2442 million in 2022 to 2.6126 million in 2025, a reduction of 631,600 people over three years, with a decline of nearly 20%. Elementary schools have also passed their peak: the number of full-time teachers in elementary schools was 6.6563 million in 2023, and decreased to 6.4582 million in 2025, a reduction of 198,100 people over two years. From the enrollment perspective alone, elementary schools enrolled 14.6174 million students in 2025, a decrease of 1.5489 million from 2024, and the downward trend in teacher demand will continue to be evident.
However, the situation is different for junior and senior high schools. In 2025, junior high school enrollment reached 18.5281 million, a slight increase from the previous year, with 4.2395 million full-time teachers. There were 30.395 million students in ordinary high schools, with 2.372 million full-time teachers, and a student-teacher ratio of 12.81:1. The number of schools, students, and teachers is still in an expansion phase. According to population predictions cited in a report by the Ministry of Education, the peak of school-age population will roughly occur in 2020 for preschool, 2023 for primary school, 2026 for junior high school, 2029 for senior high school, and 2032 for higher education. This means that in the next few years, the education system will experience "contraction at the front end and expansion at the back end" simultaneously.
This explains an apparent paradox: the total number of teachers nationwide has decreased, yet some areas are still building new middle schools and supplementing high school teachers. A decrease in population does not mean that all age groups will immediately have fewer people, nor does it mean that teacher positions can be reduced in a uniform proportion. The unit of judgment for teacher supply and demand must shift from "national total" to "a specific county or district, a specific year, a specific age group, and a specific subject".
A study based on the teacher-to-student ratio, class size, and retirement age estimates that from 2026 to 2030, the demand for primary school teachers may decrease by 1.47 million, with approximately 820,000 teachers retiring during the same period, resulting in a remaining pressure of around 650,000. Although the demand for junior high school teachers may decrease by 250,000, the retirement scale during the same period is approximately 580,000, which may lead to a shortage of around 330,000. It is essential to emphasize that this is not an official "layoff number," but rather a stress test. It alerts policymakers that after considering factors such as retirement, peak enrollment, and regional migration, the apparent overall surplus may be accompanied by local shortages.
Surplus Begins to Emerge
Why Are Some Schools Still Short of Teachers?
The question of whether the total number of teachers is sufficient is the easiest to answer—and the easiest to answer misleadingly. Teachers are not desks that can be reassigned between schools on the same day. Behind every teaching post lie staffing quotas, credentials, professional titles, family circumstances, and subject expertise. One "teacher" in the aggregate, when brought down to the school level, must pass at least three filters: grade level, region, and subject. If any one of these fails to align, statistical teacher supply cannot translate into effective supply in the classroom.
The first mismatch is a mismatch of learning stages.
Preschool and primary school teachers are under pressure first, while demand for junior and senior high school teachers remains high, but transitioning between different educational stages is not as simple as switching to a new schedule. Primary school teachers who transfer to junior high schools need to match corresponding teacher qualifications, subject knowledge, and classroom management methods; kindergarten teachers find it even more difficult to directly enter compulsory education subject teaching. Even if teachers are willing to change jobs, whether their professional titles, job levels, and performance evaluations can be connected also determines whether the transition is feasible.
When there is a surplus of elementary school teachers in a region, the most realistic solution is often not to "transfer all of them to middle schools," but to first assess the age, professional background, and trainability of the surplus teachers, and then combine measures such as job rotation, teaching assistance, temporary transfers, early retirement, and natural attrition. For young teachers, there is still room for cross-grade training; for teachers nearing retirement, the cost of forced job rotation may outweigh the benefits.
The second mismatch is a spatial mismatch.
The phenomenon of having fewer children and population mobility are happening simultaneously. Rural elementary schools and town schools in counties with declining populations are experiencing a rapid decrease in student numbers, while high-quality schools in metropolitan areas, new urban districts, and county towns continue to absorb the population. According to publicly available data, in 2025, the number of full-time elementary school teachers in cities increased by approximately 87,800, while decreasing by around 36,000 in town areas and 118,000 in rural areas. As the total number of elementary school teachers nationwide declines, cities are still recruiting more teachers, which precisely illustrates that teacher demand is shifting along with the population.
More problematic is that small schools cannot reduce their teacher numbers in proportion to the decrease in students. A rural school with only a few dozen students still needs to offer the full range of national curriculum courses and requires basic positions such as homeroom teachers, Chinese, mathematics, physical education, and so on. If teacher allocation is based solely on student-teacher ratios, it is easy to end up with a surplus of teachers on paper, but no one to teach classes. On the other hand, areas with population inflows may not have a shortage of total teacher allocations, but may still rely heavily on temporary hires due to delays in approving new teacher positions to match the opening of new schools.
The third mismatch is between disciplines and capabilities.
Traditional recruitment has long revolved around major subjects such as language, mathematics, and English, with normal universities forming a relatively stable supply of professionals. However, new school demands are rapidly emerging: science education is being introduced to more grade levels, mental health education is shifting from simply having counseling rooms to becoming a regular curriculum and crisis intervention, special education is emphasizing inclusive support, information technology courses are being continuously updated, and artificial intelligence education is beginning to be incorporated into curricula, clubs, and school-based practices.
The 2026 teacher recruitment policy requires local areas to focus on supplementing scarce subjects such as moral and legal education, science, information technology, sports, art, labor, and mental health based on demand over the next three to five years, and also proposes reserving teaching talent for artificial intelligence education. This policy list itself is a note on changes in demand: what schools lack are not "more homogeneous teachers," but rather those who can undertake new courses, new services, and cross-disciplinary tasks.
From Hiring to Redeploying
Teachers' Management Enters Restructuring Phase
In the era of incremental growth, governance tools were relatively straightforward: as the number of students increased, schools were expanded, new ones were built, and more teachers were hired. However, in the era of stock adjustment, the situation is much more complex. A decrease in demand for certain positions does not automatically lead to a flow of personnel to areas where there are shortages, and it is even possible for a stalemate to occur where "schools have vacancies but lack people, while counties have people but cannot use them." The key to the next stage is not to invent a uniform reduction ratio, but to establish more refined predictions, a broader range of adjustments, and clearer career transition channels.
The first step is to make population predictions accurate down to the county and school level. The national "15th Five-Year" education plan has proposed establishing a forecasting and early warning mechanism for school-age population, improving the dynamic adjustment mechanism across different educational stages, and coordinating teacher staffing allocations. For county-level education departments, this means they need to have data on birth rates, population migration, new home deliveries, new school openings, enrollment rates, and teacher retirements for the next three to five years on the same page. Without this layer of prediction, hiring can easily follow the inertia of the previous year, while mergers and closures can excessively chase short-term numbers.
The third step is to establish an executable institutional chain for career transition. While teacher mobility between schools is relatively easy, transitioning between different educational stages or subjects requires qualification certification, course training, on-the-job practice, assessment and evaluation, as well as title promotion linkage. If policies only propose "strengthening training", they often end up being short-term lectures; truly effective career transition should be like a vocational re-education: clearly defining the ability standards for the new position, providing modular learning for half a year to one year, completing internships in real classrooms, and providing post and treatment guarantees for those who complete the program.
The fourth step is to manage the exit mechanism, but this should not be simplistically equated with layoffs. The public school teaching workforce carries a strong public-service character; crude staff reductions would shift the entire risk of demographic fluctuations onto individuals and could also undermine the profession's appeal. A more prudent combination would be: rely primarily on retirement and natural attrition to absorb the overall surplus; provide cross-level and cross-subject pathways for those capable of transitioning; use regional teacher rotation pools to address short-term peak demand; and for those chronically unsuited to their posts, improve assessment, reassignment, and lawful exit mechanisms.
There is also an often-overlooked option: not treating all "surpluses" as costs that need to be eliminated. In the past, large class sizes, heavy teacher workloads, and inadequate after-school services were largely due to a shortage of teacher resources. When the number of students decreases, some regions can transform the improvement in student-teacher ratios into smaller class sizes, individualized tutoring, mentorship programs for all, research time, and home-school communication, rather than mechanically pursuing a reduction in teacher numbers proportional to the decrease in student numbers. The surplus of teachers resulting from the declining birth rate could also become an opportunity to improve the quality of basic education.
The goal of inventory restructuring is not to have every teacher fully utilized, but to transform limited personnel into higher-quality, more resilient educational services.
Recruitment Landscape Undergoes Shift
Normal Education Cannot Continue to Expand by Inertia
The imbalance between the supply and demand of teachers will ultimately be felt by normal universities. In the past, the expansion of the teaching workforce provided a stable outlet for normal university programs. With the opening up of teacher qualification exams and the participation of comprehensive universities in teacher training, the sources of supply have increased further. Now, with the contraction of basic education recruitment, if normal university programs continue to enroll students on a historical scale and focus on traditional large disciplines, graduates will face a more intense and fragmented job market in four years.
Adjustments do not mean that all normal university majors will uniformly reduce enrollment. A more reasonable approach is to handle this in a layered manner: preschool education and some elementary education majors should be prudently reduced in conjunction with the population trends of each province; junior and senior high school subjects in short supply, special education, science education, mental health, and vocational education-related fields should be supplemented according to regional needs; Ministry-affiliated normal universities and research-oriented normal colleges should reduce homogeneous undergraduate expansion, putting more resources into high-level teachers, education research, and the development of in-service teachers.
Normal universities also need to change the logic of one-time training. Teaching positions will undergo multiple changes throughout a career: elementary school teachers may transition to middle school, subject teachers may take on science education or learning support, and backbone teachers may become regional teaching researchers. Instead of only completing professional division once at the age of 18, normal universities should be built into long-term capability centers for regional teachers, providing micro majors, subject transformation certificates, short-cycle on-campus research and development, and capability certification based on real classrooms.
Artificial intelligence will accelerate this transformation, but it is not the main reason for the decline in the number of teachers this time around. Demographic changes determine the overall direction of job numbers, and AI first changes the task structure within jobs: searching for teaching materials, grading basic questions, statistical tables, and routine Q&A are more easily assisted by tools; classroom observation, relationship building, value judgment, student psychological identification, and complex learning design are instead more important. What schools will need in the future is not a solitary "AI teacher" profession, but a group of teachers who can embed AI into subject teaching while maintaining educational judgment.
The contraction in teacher recruitment is a result of population changes affecting the education system, marking a shift in basic education from focusing solely on expansion to prioritizing both quality and efficiency. However, a "overall decline" does not necessarily imply "universal surplus." In the coming years, pressure will continue to ease for preschool and elementary school levels, while junior and senior high schools will still need to accommodate peak enrollment, and areas with population inflows will require additional teachers, and new curricula will also create new capability gaps.
What truly needs to be rewritten is the entire logic of supply and demand: recruitment plans shift from focusing on the current year's shortfall to looking at the population over the next three to five years; staffing is adjusted from being fixed in a single school to being coordinated at the county or city level; teachers shift from being assigned to a single position to being able to transfer sustainably; normal universities shift from solely training new teachers to also serving both pre-service and in-service training; and the evaluation system must also allow teachers to devote more time to individualized guidance, teaching research, and student support.
If reforms only go as far as "recruiting a little less," the mismatch between supply and demand will not disappear, but will instead transform from a quantitative contradiction to a more subtle structural one: on one hand, young normal university graduates cannot find positions, while on the other hand, schools cannot find suitable candidates; on one hand, rural teachers are counted as surplus, while on the other hand, cities rely heavily on temporary hires for new school principals; on one hand, traditional subjects are overcrowded, while on the other hand, it is difficult to offer a full range of courses in science, psychology, and special education.
The challenge posed by the declining birth rate to the education system has also created a rare opportunity for improvement. Simply viewing the "surplus personnel" as a burden may ultimately result in fewer teachers; however, reallocating these resources to areas with greater shortages, more needed school segments, and more valuable work may lead to better education. The new answer to the supply and demand of teachers does not lie in a single national total curve, but rather in each specific instance of flow, transformation, and capability update.