What It Took Young People in China to Get Their Jobs Not long ago, China’s economy was the envy of the world. Now a new generation of aspiring professionals is facing the toughest job market in years.
By Vivian Wang, Agnes Chang and Siyi Zhao Jan. 28, 2024
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I didn’t have my own path, and that made me very anxious.”
Even if it was just a
sliver of a chance, I felt
I needed to seize it.”
Maybe I’m not good enough at toughing things out.”
I didn’t have my own path, and that made me very anxious.”
Even if it was just a sliver of a chance, I felt I needed to seize it.”
Maybe I’m not good enough at toughing things out.”
They knew the job market would be tough. None were prepared for just how tough it proved to be.
China’s economy is struggling through a sustained slowdown, with real estate developers mired in debt, families fearful of spending and entrepreneurs hesitating to take risks. Joblessness levels among young people have hit record highs.
We spoke to five young Chinese about what it took to find their jobs amid such uncertainty. They described moving home with their parents, exhausting their savings, taking on unpaid internships or working two jobs.
They also spoke of a generational disillusionment. Born in the headiest years of China’s economic boom, they grew up with more opportunities and more comforts than their parents — and also higher expectations. They were told that, with hard work and the right education, their futures were all but guaranteed.
Now, those boom years are fading, as are many young people’s hopes — with unpredictable consequences for China and the world.
Nadia Yang, Class of 2019
To find her ideal job, Nadia Yang shelled out more than $5,000, moved from a prosperous coastal city to her hometown and spent 20 months doing little but studying.
All for a position that paid less than half what she used to make. But that was OK, because it was a job in the government.
Jobs in the civil service in China are often low-paying and unglamorous. But they are seen as the epitome of job security — which appealed to Ms. Yang after the once-booming field of private tutoring, where she used to work, was suddenly wiped out by a government crackdown in 2021.
Ms. Yang was not alone: Record numbers of young Chinese have taken the civil service examination in recent years, as government crackdowns and the slowing economy have caused large-scale layoffs in the private sector.
To prepare for the exam, Ms. Yang left the city of Hangzhou, where she’d lived for two years, and moved in with her parents. After exhausting her own savings, she relied on them for money. She paid $200 for study material. She signed up for 15 exams — each city had its own — paying an additional $210 in registration fees.
Because China’s Covid restrictions were still in place, she also had to pay for a total of three weeks of quarantine accommodations while traveling between cities.
And yet for months, Ms. Yang struggled to advance past the initial rounds.
“You feel like you’ve forced yourself down a dead end,” she said.
In October 2022, more than a year after she started studying, she found out she had made it to the final round for a job in the small northern city of Yanan. In preparation, she signed up for a weeklong course there on preparing for job interviews, which cost $2,300. She bought new leather shoes, makeup and clothes. And she waited — for an agonizing five months.
In March, Ms. Yang finally had her interview and was hired by the Yanan transportation bureau the same month.
Her monthly salary was only $420, compared with the $1,000 she had earned in Hangzhou. But she works regular hours, and doesn’t worry about being laid off. Housing and meals are covered. The peace of mind is worth it — at least for now.
“Be content with what you have,” she said. “What else can you do?”
Fiona Qin, Class of 2023
Qilai Shen for The New York Times
Until recently, Fiona Qin had always had a plan. She wanted to get into a good college, then a top graduate school, then find work as a journalist at a news outlet in a big city.
She seemed well on her way in the fall of 2022, as graduation approached. While finishing her master’s program in Beijing, she completed several internships. She set a target of submitting applications to 100 jobs — surely enough, she thought, to net an offer.
But soon, her plans started to unravel. That fall, as Covid spread widely, China imposed another round of mass lockdowns. Ms. Qin couldn’t predict whether she’d be able to leave her home the next day, let alone where she’d be in a few months.
Most of her job applications went unanswered, as the broader economy flailed. Ms. Qin started applying to any field she thought might take her — not just journalism but also tech, publishing houses, even retail brands.
Ms. Qin was overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness. “Submitting 100 résumés and hardly getting any response, it was terrifying,” she said.
In January, finally, a Shanghai news outlet offered her an unpaid internship. She moved to the city and signed a $370-a-month lease, relying on her savings and money from her parents.
But where Ms. Qin might have previously tried to game out how to maximize her odds of staying in Shanghai — applying to other jobs, for example — she decided to focus only on the internship at hand. If it turned into a permanent job, she’d be thrilled. If not, she would figure things out then.
A few months later, she was offered a full-time position. But even now, Ms. Qin is skeptical of making any long-term plans.
“Life is too unpredictable,” she said. “I just want to do well in this moment.”
Ethan Yi, Class of 2022
Qilai Shen for The New York Times
Looking back, Ethan Yi thinks he had been a little entitled, or at least naive.
Mr. Yi, who graduated in June 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in management, had always been told that a college education came with certain benefits. He wouldn’t need to toil as his parents had, working as vegetable wholesalers. He could expect good pay and respect.
At first, his expectations seemed borne out. He landed a job at the Chinese car company Geely, earning nearly $1,000 a month, above average for a fresh grad like himself.
But when he started the role, he was assigned mostly administrative tasks, like filing expenses, that Mr. Yi considered beneath him. After five months, he quit.
While looking for another job, Mr. Yi applied for temporary work. His disappointment followed him. He quit after just three days as a waiter, and soon left other jobs at a hotel and an amusement park.
“At the end of the day, I’m a college graduate,” he said. “If you want me to go serve others, I think that’s a bit too low, to be honest.”
Mr. Yi had run into an emerging problem in China: A college degree isn’t the golden ticket it used to be. For decades, the government has pushed, successfully, to expand university enrollment. Yet the supply of jobs that matches graduates’ qualifications has not kept pace.
As headlines about unemployment proliferated, though, Mr. Yi began to wonder if his expectations were the problem. Other young people working jobs that were less than ideal seemed able to tough things out.
In September, Mr. Yi decided to try his luck in Shanghai. This time, he vowed, he would make it stick, even if it meant taking jobs he once wouldn’t have considered.
“If others pick me, that’s enough. I’m not qualified to be picky,” he said.
Two weeks after arriving, he was hired by an agricultural chemical company, for $730 a month. He rented an apartment on the outskirts of the city and threw himself into training.
“I’ll see how things go, take it slow,” he said. “Making fast money is impossible. I see that now.”
Phoebe Liu, Class of 2022
Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times
Phoebe Liu badly wanted to work at ByteDance, the Chinese tech company behind TikTok. So when she landed an interview there, she decided to go all out.
She hired an online interview coach who, for $35, would give her a one-hour mock interview session and feedback.
Many university students typically land job offers during the fall campus recruitment period. But this was ending, and Ms. Liu had nothing lined up despite sending dozens of applications. She grew so stressed that her skin broke out badly, and she visited a doctor, forking out about $70.
The costs were adding up. She was already paying about $400 in rent for a shared bedroom in Beijing, where she was doing an internship at Xiaohongshu, another tech company. The salary there was about $20 a day — barely enough to cover half of one online coaching session.
But Ms. Liu was desperate. When she advanced to the second round of the ByteDance interview, she paid for another coaching session. Then she advanced again — hence, another session.
“You’ll do anything you can to buy yourself some security and peace of mind,” she said.
Ms. Liu ultimately did not get the ByteDance job. She took time off from her internship to prepare for other interviews, forgoing a half day’s pay each time. She visited the doctor again, bringing her medical bills to about $140.
Finally, in December, Ms. Liu received a full-time offer out of her internship at Xiaohongshu. The salary was above average, at nearly $3,000 a month.
Still, Ms. Liu was rattled by how hard it was to get her first full-time job. Other traditional benchmarks of adulthood, like buying a house, felt more out of reach than ever, especially in a city as expensive as Beijing. While her father had succeeded as a businessman as China’s economy boomed, she doubted that she would be as upwardly mobile.
“Even if I work my hardest for 10 or 20 years, will I really make as much as them?” she said of her parents’ generation. “Now you can’t accomplish the same things through your own hard work.”
Tsuki Jin, Class of 2020
Qilai Shen for The New York Times
Tsuki Jin grew up in a small city in inland China, but had long wanted to experience life outside. And in April, she decided to make that dream happen — tough job market or not.
Ms. Jin, who asked to be identified by her family name and a nickname, quit the human resources job she had worked for two years and moved to Shanghai, with nothing new lined up and roughly $700 in savings.
“I think it’s not good for young people to be too comfortable,” she said. “It’s good to go out and see things.”
Ms. Jin’s path shows how some young Chinese are able to hold on to their ambitions: being willing to compromise on almost everything else.
She quickly accepted another human resources job, even though it paid only $700 a month, barely higher than what she had earned at home, where the cost of living was much lower. She hunted for part-time jobs, working weekends as a cashier at a games arcade.
Ms. Jin cut down on expenses wherever possible. Her primary goal was to stay in Shanghai. Everything else was secondary, including what she looked for in a job.
“My requirements aren’t high,” she said. “There are a lot of people who are more accomplished.”
Her pragmatism made it possible for her to keep taking new risks. She quit her first job after several weeks to look for a higher-paying one, because she knew that she would have no problem turning back to less glamorous work if needed.
About a month after that, she switched again to her current job, which pays $1,270 a month — double what she’d earned at home.
Even with her new job, though, Ms. Jin is already thinking ahead to her next adventure. After a few years in Shanghai, she wants to try other cities.
“It’s all life experience,” she said.
Note: Events in the timelines are based on sources’ recollection.
Additional work by Pablo Robles.