That's a solid starting salary for professionals (what i'm targeting, actually), but it is rather low and would be a poor prospect for someone with Mandarin fluency, being the qualifier here. Employers are trying to take the highly qualified and just jam them into whatever low-paying corner they can, and leave anyone other than the highly-qualified out on the street to rot, not calculating that a shrunken middle class will annihilate them in the long run.

Okay, Mandarin is key here.

But, by "professionals", do you mean professionals in the field of secretary? And a secretary in the US basically means the same as secretary means here (doing basic office work such as answering phone calls, checking the mail, arranging schedules for other workers etc)?

I have to agree with this. I would have to say that the unemployed pool of people is over-stocked with the least desirable employees. This problem is further compounded by the fact that people just send out 100 CVs and see what sticks. Now imagine that every potential employee is doing that for any and all potential job openings. The behaviour of CV spamming is what leads employers to try to find ways to cull the pile quickly.

So true,  I honestly wanted to post exactly the same. 

Don't really see an problem, when I came to Brussels and tried to find a job they basically told me I should speak fluent Dutch and French if I really want to get an job and because I showed every employer that I was studying the languages and got job pretty fast =p.      (not speaking fluent yet though)

After all those months you could have an basic of mandarin knowledge and that could have been enough to start that secretary job...  

Most employers want people who spend time and work to get an job especially in this times and certainly don't want losers who spend time complaining.  

Pretty sure some Employers read this and think you deserve to be unemployed...   they have the money and your future in yoru hands you can't expect they just give it to you...

Which is understandable, but at the same time they need to find a better way to do it then cronyism or that Automated resume-reading software that skips over resumes from perfectly qualified individuals that just happen to use the wrong syntax, and then get passed over, secret, insidious, non-transparent methods to cull qualified applicants, or have it be about who you know, which should be illegal.

I work hard and have qualifications, and all i (and i would imagine others in my scenario) just want a chance to put our foot in the door, and to not put out dozens of resumes without even notification that the resumes have been received. But we get passed over because of random chance or cronyism.

There should be laws that all employers have to respond to all received resumes, and explain precisely why prospective employees were passed over, and no, i don't care how onerous such laws would be, it's only decent.