"This follows industry relocation to smaller cities building clusters in electronics, equipment, and new energy" [industry relocation]
The quote directly names the causal mechanism — industry relocation forming clusters — that the signal claims is redirecting graduate talent flows from major to lower-tier cities.
Reasoning from this article
The article documents a five-year trend where the graduate share in major cities fell from 42% to 37% while lower-tier cities rose from 58% to 63%, explicitly attributed to industrial cluster formation. This generalizes beyond China: wherever governments or market forces relocate advanced manufacturing clusters, graduate labor markets reorganize around those clusters rather than legacy financial or administrative capitals. The dynamic challenges the conventional assumption that human capital always concentrates in the largest cities.