How bad is the job market in China?
Apparently, it's so bad that the latest trend is for young people to move back home and work for their parents.
And, no, I don't mean work for the family business. I mean they are being paid to live at their parents' home and be their parents' kids and do chores around the house.
Stupid me, I did this for free for years!
In recent months, the hashtags #FullTimeDaughter and #FullTimeSon have been trending on Chinese social media platforms, attracting millions of views. They refer to adult children who, due to unemployment, are hired by their parents mainly to do housework and be on hand whenever needed.
The story features a young girl who tried and failed to start a business, so she moved back home where her parents pay her about 8,000 yuan ($1,100) a month to be their child and do their chores and maybe make some phone calls for them.
Shoot, I'd take that!
But then I'd have to live with my parents.
These are difficult life decisions...
Mao Xuxin, principal economist at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in Britain, said it was a "worrying" sign for young people if they are choosing to become full-time children as "it is very hard for them to get out of it and return to society."
In recent years, Mao said, young people in China have started looking for less demanding, more short-term jobs. Then came the rise of the "lying flat" movement, which embraces doing the bare minimum to get by rather than working relentlessly. Now, he said, some have taken the next step by asking their parents for help.
It seems like Gen Z is messed up around the globe.
Fun!
Remember when being a self-obsessed failure to launch was a bad thing?
Youth unemployment has become a serious challenge for China, the world's second-largest economy, especially after three years of "zero-Covid" restrictions weighed heavily on growth. The jobless rate among people ages 16 to 24 was a record 21.3% in June, the National Bureau of Statistics reported on Monday.
More than 1-in-5 young Chinese adults cannot find a job in China. That is staggering!!
Compare those numbers to the US, sitting at a really high 7.5%.
Sounds like this "lying flat" movement is a global phenomenon in our post-Covid world: Just do the bare minimum to get by, chill out, and enjoy your life. I mean, it sounds good in theory, but probably not something we wanna run with here.
Good times make weak men (and women), y'all.
