Marvin Li was browsing social media late last year when he started coming across posts about people being downsized from their jobs, some of the many victims of China’s recent economic difficulties, as the country faces severe headwinds both domestically and internationally.
“I started my own business after being laid off during the pandemic,” Mr. Li said. “So I can understand the anxiety of not being able to find a job and the pressure from family.”
That pressure will be particularly intense this week, as millions travel across China to visit their relatives for the Lunar New Year. As well as the usual questions about marriage and children, many will be bracing for awkward inquiries about their work, or what they’re doing to save for a future that seems increasingly uncertain.
Mr. Li provides something of a solution: He is one of a number of entrepreneurs renting out space in their offices to those out of work. For less than $10 a day, the newly unemployed can have a desk in his Hangzhou office at which to polish and send out their resume and, more importantly for some, a “job” to go to that they can tell their family about.
“Most of their relatives don’t understand how bleak the job market is,” Mr. Li said.
For an extra fee, he provides lunch to his customers, as he does his actual employees, and has even pretended to be someone’s colleague during a video call with their mother. “He had recently graduated, but I guess he couldn’t find a suitable job,” Mr. Li said.
To a westerner, the green numbers on this Shanghai stock index might look good, but in China the colours of economics are reversed: Green means a loss, red an increase.Go Nakamura/Reuters
The Chinese government’s crackdowns on the tech and education sectors have wiped out millions of well-paying jobs in recent years. While Beijing has eased off since 2023, and the tech sector has enjoyed victories such as DeepSeek’s market-rattling advances in artificial intelligence, many of those jobs have not been replaced.
Newly created positions are in lower-paying service or manual roles, a bitter pill to swallow for a generation of graduates that was encouraged to focus on schooling above all else in order to secure a future career.
China’s economy grew about 5 per cent last year, defying expectations to hit the government’s target after repeated stimulus measures. But analysts have warned short-term measures are insufficient, with structural issues around lacklustre consumer demand, high local government debt, a fragile housing market and growing international pressure – particularly from the new administration of U.S. President Donald Trump – all weighing on the Chinese economy’s prospects in the Year of the Snake.
“The key question is if we can see consumer confidence bottom out and begin a meaningful recovery,” Lynn Song, chief economist for Greater China at the Dutch bank ING, wrote in a recent analysis. “Pessimism has grown quite entrenched as of late, and it will take a lot of effort to break out of the doldrums.”
That sentiment is palpable on Chinese social media, despite government censorship and constant bullish headlines in state-run outlets, and in interviews with people who are suddenly struggling to get by in an economy that has been booming most of their lives.
Lily Su, a college student in Hunan province, is staking her future on one of two exams: one to get into a postgraduate program somewhere in the country, and another to enter China’s sprawling civil service – one of the few remaining “iron rice bowl” positions, as roles in state-run enterprises with guaranteed job security used to be known in the Mao era.
“Passing either one of these exams can be a guarantee for my future,” Ms. Su said. “It’s very hard to find a job right now, and I’m not attending a prestigious university.”
Neither more education nor becoming a civil servant is particularly appealing to her, but Ms. Su said she is facing intense pressure from her parents.
“I have a younger brother, so the family’s savings are divided between two children, which makes things relatively tight,” she said. “I’m not frantically saving money, but I read a lot of money-saving tips and try to reduce my expenses. I haven’t bought any new clothes for almost a year.”
Such behaviour is common, and speaks to the paradox Chinese policy makers are facing: They have to boost domestic demand to counterbalance international pressure, but the sluggish economy is prompting many consumers to cut back.
While employment can be a struggle for many, some young families are discovering they are a newly attractive prospect for many cities, as China’s population continues to shrink and a demographic crisis looms. Across the country, municipalities are easing their hukou – or household registration – policies, which have long prevented migrant workers from receiving government benefits such as health care and schooling.
Originally from Bengbu, a city in northern Anhui province, Kang Ziming and his wife moved to the southern metropolis of Guangzhou to open a restaurant, but had to leave their daughter home with her grandparents, as they did not have the requisite hukou that would enable her to access preschools or health care.
In November, Guangzhou published new regulations allowing anyone who has bought property in seven outer districts or paid 200,000 yuan (around $40,000) in income tax over the past 36 months to apply for hukou. Many other cities with large numbers of empty apartments as a result of the property crisis have introduced similar measures.
After much deliberation Mr. Kang eventually settled on Nanjing, the former imperial capital near Shanghai, where he can also secure hukou for his daughter through buying a second-hand apartment, though he and his wife will continue to work in Guangzhou for the time being.
“We need to earn more money to have the confidence to raise our children,” he said. “I totally understand the phenomenon that people don’t dare to spend money nowadays because neither do we. We spent a lot of money on a house mainly for the purpose of getting hukou registration.”
With a report from Alexandra Li in Beijing