In China’s new era of mass youth unemployment, young adults who are struggling come in a multitude of types.
Take the “996” employees—they work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week—are “lying flat.” These are two of the roughly dozen of worker burnout-related expressions that have emerged in China in recent years. Lying flat can mean coming to work but doing little to no work, or simply quitting altogether.
Those caught in the employment crisis, for instance, are the barely employed tech worker so burned out that he does little more than show up at the office and nap at the keyboard. The employee may not be worried, but his chances of being let go are significant. Companies have so much leverage in this worker-surplus economy that firms can fire and rehire with ease; there are millions waiting to take the same tiring position.
“Think about it,” said Guo Qingfeng, an IT worker at a large tech firm in Beijing’s “Silicon Valley,” known as Zhongguancun. “If I’m fired, I don’t really lose that much money,” he said, declining to disclose his salary but saying it wasn’t much. “But I would get freedom and this daily stress off my back.”
He’s not alone. Barron’s spoke with five other workers with strikingly similar sentiments working in the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu. There’s a record-shattering number of jobless young people. More than 20% of Chinese aged 16 to 24 can’t find work, according to official statistics released for June. Some Chinese scholars say the number could be substantially higher.
The number is so high that after June officials simply stopped releasing the figure altogether. It is estimated that the August number is at least as high, and it comes alongside another record high statistic—11.6 million Chinese graduated this summer and began their job hunts.
Youth unemployment spiked worldwide during the pandemic, but it normalized relatively quickly in places like the U.S., where it was 8.7% in July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In China, there’s also what might be called the debt-embracer. This is the young spender who wants an independent lifestyle, living alone or with friends, but either doesn’t want to work or simply can’t find an open position.
Dozens of social media apps in China—most notably Alipay,
Tencent Holdings,
(ticker: 700.Hong Kong), and
Meituan
(3690.Hong Kong)—now offer lending to essentially anyone, in exchange for exorbitant—sometimes daily—interest fees. None of the companies responded to Barron’s request for comment.
In Shanghai, 27-year-old Angel Wu told Barron’s she has borrowed 70,000 yuan ($9,700) in just over a month from multiple apps since completing her masters in the U.K. and having no luck with her—admittedly lackluster—job searching.
And a new genre of jobless youth has emerged—the “full-time child.” This group took China’s social media by storm over the summer, showing videos of their lives living with their parents with often scant indication of any pursuit of traditional employment.
Many on social media and several with whom Barron’s spoke said they do things around the house in exchange for living at home without an income.
“I walk the dog, wash our clothes, clean and mop, and grocery shop if I’m out,” Li Xiaoyi said from a suburb of the western city of Chengdu.
While many parents in the West—and certainly many still in China—would find this resignation to essentially being the family housemaid intolerable, a surprising number of young adults said their parents are happy about the situation.
“My parents had me when they were relatively old, so they want to see me as much as possible these days. They encourage me to stay home,” Li said.
It’s unclear what immediate economic implications this trend is having on China’s already weak economy. Youth are important drivers of consumption in China, and tend to spend more on culture and education, according to a note by
Goldman Sachs.
Some “full-time children” receive small stipends for their chores, which would seem to shift spending away from areas like renting and more toward consumables.
“I have no rent expenses, so I can go see movies and stuff if I want,” Li said, declining to say how much money she receives from her parents.
This group isn’t to be confused with those out of work under other conditions. For instance, vast numbers of Chinese children from wealthy families receive essentially blank financial checks from their parents, a car, and often their own apartment bought with family money.
The property portion of this cohort is strategic in multiple respects. It puts their child out of the house and makes them a better candidate for finding a partner and having a social life. But most importantly, it plants a huge amount of cash in China’s favorite form of investment—property. Some 70% of the country’s wealth is tied up in property, and roughly 90% of Chinese own a residence, according to government statistics. But there are tight rules around buying a second home, so an easy route for parents to do so is to put it under their child’s name.
Last month, officials made it even easier for such dependents to register a home purchase under their name. These “first-time” home buyers can now enjoy cheaper mortgage rates, alongside tax incentives. The hope is that the relaxed rules will help breathe life back into China’s moribund property sector, which accounts for nearly 30% of the country’s gross domestic output, according to multiple independent estimates.
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