Rampant youth unemployment in China has left millions of young people floundering, living at home, relying on delivery jobs or, in a growing trend, “pretending to go to work.”
In posts on the video-sharing platform Douyin, young people are creating a routine where none exists out of sessions spent studying or applying for jobs in libraries and internet cafes.
Some are even paying for “study rooms” to get them out of the house and give structure to their days, sometimes while they study for highly competitive civil service entrance exams, according to state media reports.
The situation has spawned a hashtag on social media,
In one video under the hashtag, one young woman offers a tour of her local county town, including the railway station, local shopping streets and scenic spots, but conceals her identity with a computer-generated animation where her head should be.
In another, a young woman hangs out on the stairwell and roof of her apartment building, apparently hiding from relatives and neighbors who think she’s at work.
Living at home
A Nov. 5 feature in Banyuetan magazine, under the aegis of state news agency Xinhua, found that it’s extremely common for people aged up to 40 in rural areas to still be living back home with their parents, who sometimes hand over money from their pensions to support them.
The situation is at odds with the Communist Party’s pledge to “comprehensively revitalize rural areas,” the report said.
“This phenomenon of relying on one’s parents is ultimately an employment or job security issue,” YouTube commentator Lying Uncle Ping said in a response to the article. “The key is to provide employment, and better quality jobs.”
He said at least rural families who still have land have a way to feed themselves, should they fall on hard times.
A former rural resident of the northern province of Hebei who gave only the surname Wang for fear of reprisals said not everyone in rural areas still has access to land, however.
“In developed areas in the south, people can go back home to work in local factories,” Wang said. “In the north, where I live, there are basically no factories in rural areas, so farming is the only option.”
Yet some areas have seen most of their agricultural land repurposed for development in recent decades, he said.
“Especially in the central regions, where people have less than one mu of land [per household],” Wang said. “They have no way to support even a basic level of existence from the land.”
A young man from a rural village in the southern province of Guangdong who used the pseudonym Marginal Person told Radio Free Asia in writing that many young people are living off their parents where he lives, because the economy is so bad.
Asked what they’re doing, he replied: “Working as food delivery riders, growing vegetables and playing the lottery.”
“There are several ways to play, and the odds range from 1:9500 to 1:950 to 1:95,” he said. “Some people here have won hundreds of thousands of yuan, bought apartments and gotten married, but there are also people who have lost everything.”
He said many feel embarrassment and shame about their situation, however.
“Takeout deliveries in my town are all being done by young people from other towns, because they’re afraid of running into people they know and being laughed at,” he said.
Renting study space
In a separate article, Banyuetan also interviewed young people in urban areas who are renting out desks in shared study spaces rather than stay home all day doing nothing.
Rented study space is particularly popular among young people preparing for civil service or postgraduate entrance exams, the article said, adding that the market will expand to more than 10 million spaces by next year.
But unemployed young people are also picking up on the trend, and renting spaces just to look busy, and to give themselves a place outside of the family home, away from parental criticism or constant inquiries about how the job hunt is going, it said.
Desks can be rented by the hour, day, month or year, costing around 500 yuan (US$70) a month, and come equipped with chair, lamp, charging sockets and a locker for belongings.
