By usual measures, Loretta Liu had made it.
A 2018 graduate of one of China's top universities, she rented an apartment in the glamorous city of Shenzhen and was hired as a visual designer at a number of high-profile companies, even as China's youth unemployment was reaching all-time highs.
He left it last year.
Workers in a Beijing office in 2021. Photo Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images
Now she works as
a groomer
in a chain of pet stores, for a fifth of her previous salary.
He spends hours on his feet, wearing a uniform instead of his previously carefully chosen suits.
And she is
delighted.
"I was tired of living like this. I didn't feel like I got anything out of work," Liu explains of her previous job, where she says she had little creative freedom, often worked overtime and felt her mental and physical health
deteriorating
. .
"So I thought: no need anymore."
Liu is part of a phenomenon that is attracting increasing attention in China:
young people trading high-pressure, prestigious white-collar jobs for blue-collar jobs.
The magnitude of this trend is hard to measure, but posts documenting a tech worker-turned-grocery-store cashier, an accountant peddling hot dogs down the street, or a content manager have spread across social media. who delivers food at home.
On Xiaohongshu, an Instagram-like app, the hashtag "My first
physical labor
experience " has more than 28 million views.
Its advocates describe the joy of having
predictable schedules
and a less competitive environment.
They acknowledge that the change requires sacrifices - Liu says she saved about $15,000 before leaving and has cut her spending drastically - but they say the spiritual drain of their previous jobs is worth escaping.
Liu says he prefers the physical exhaustion of fighting uncooperative dogs to the mental strain of poring over designs he hasn't chosen.
Many also say that they are looking for light, non-intensive physical work like construction or factories.
Around the world, the coronavirus pandemic has caused people to rethink the value of their work:
see the "Great Resignation" in the United States.
But in China, the forces fueling youth disillusionment are especially strong.
Long
work hours
and domineering bosses are common.
The economy is slowing, clouding the prospects for advancement for a generation that has known nothing but explosive growth.
And then there are three years of "zero COVID" restrictions in China, forcing many to endure lengthy lockouts, layoffs and the realization
that their hard work gave them
little control over their futures.
"Emotionally, probably everyone can't take it anymore, because during the pandemic we saw a lot of unfair and strange things, like being locked up," Liu said.
The tendency to change jobs has reignited the debate about the futility of the rat race.
Two years ago, a similar call to quit work and enjoy life, called "
laying down
," spread widely across the Internet.
Critics accused his followers of squandering their parents' investment and abandoning the industriousness that helped make China a superpower.
But others blamed their disenchantment on a value system that had prioritized
a consumerist path
to success.
Since then, the competition for white-collar jobs has been increasingly fierce.
A record number of students are expected to graduate from universities this year, even as companies have cut back on hiring.
The unemployment rate among people between the ages of 16 and 24 was almost
20%
last summer, according to official statistics, being higher among university graduates.
So rather than push themselves even harder to compete, some find the traditionally less coveted route attractive.
"The purpose of studying and accumulating knowledge is not to get an impressive job, but to have the courage to accept more possibilities," reads the description of an online forum, which invited its more than 39,000 members to ask how exhausting it is to set up a position street or to describe his experience waiting tables.
When 25-year-old Eunice Wang was offered a consulting job in Beijing last year after completing her master's degree, she immediately accepted.
She was proud to have stood out from so much competition and wanted to see how far she could go.
But Chinese business culture is notoriously demanding, and employee deaths at internet companies raise questions about overwork and mental health.
According to Wang, he soon fell into a vicious cycle:
The overload of work made her anxious, but she was too busy to relax.
Also, she hadn't seen her parents in almost a year, due to COVID travel restrictions.
She left him last fall.
He now works at a coffee shop in his hometown of Shenyang in northeast China, earning
a fifth
of his previous salary.
She lives with her parents and earns extra money as a freelance illustrator, a hobby she had given up in Beijing.
Wang, who describes his family as affluent middle class, acknowledges that he is lucky to be able to afford this choice.
She would go back to work as a clerk if her parents ever needed financial help, she said.
But until then, he valued the opportunity to
challenge
his notions of success.
"Everybody thought that winning a project or getting a client was a great thing, and I wanted to force myself to believe the same thing," he says of his old job.
But she found that she found enough gratification in making friends with a customer or receiving compliments on a well-made latte.
"I don't need other people to tell me what the future holds for me."
Those who have made the switch are likely to remain a tiny minority.
Many of those who have posted on online forums ask questions rather than jump in.
Some of those who left their top-earning jobs admit they don't know how long they will stay in their new occupations;
some say they spend more than they earn.
Critics online have dismissed job changers as naive, suggesting they are
playing poverty
or taking blue-collar jobs away from less educated people who need them.
But there have also been criticisms in the opposite direction:
Recently, China's state broadcaster partly blamed the unemployment problem on educated Chinese youth being too reluctant to take on blue-collar jobs, suggesting they are spoiled.
Social media users responded furiously, pointing out that society had long valued education above all else and, especially since China's economic reform began, viewed manual labor as something to get rid of.
The problem was not that young people thought they were too good for the job, but that it offered no real chance at a better life, due to lower wages and persistent discrimination, said Nie Riming, a research fellow at the Institute of Finance and Law. from Shanghai.
Until China offers higher-paying blue-collar jobs and gives them more respect, young people will be pragmatic, not demanding.
"If the society is not diverse, it is impossible to expect students to make diverse decisions," he said.
Some of the young Chinese who praise their new, less prestigious jobs had not initially planned to take them.
When Yolanda Jiang, 24, quit her architectural design job in Shenzhen last summer after being asked to work 30 straight days, she hoped to find another office job.
Only after three months of fruitless searching, with his savings dwindling, did he take a job as a
security guard
at a college dormitory complex.
At first he was embarrassed to tell his family or friends, but he came to appreciate the work.
His 12-hour shifts, though long, were uneventful.
He left work on time.
The job included free accommodation in a residence.
His salary, at about $870 a month, was even
20% higher
than he had been before, a symptom of how the glut of college graduates has begun to drive down salaries for that group.
But Jiang said his ultimate goal remains to return to an office, where he hopes to find more intellectual challenges.
He had taken advantage of the slow pace of his security job to study English, which he hoped would help him land his next job, perhaps with a foreign trade company.
"Actually, I'm not lying down," Jiang says.
"I'm treating it as a time to rest, transition, learn, recharge and think about the direction of my life."
c.2023 The New York Times Company
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