“Full-time children”: young Chinese who go back to live with their parents because they are exhausted by work or can’t find one

Exhausted and overworked, Julie quit her job as a game developer in Beijing last April to become a “full-time daughter.”

At 29, she now spends her days washing dishes, preparing food for her parents, and other household chores.

Her parents pay for most of her expenses, but Julie turned down her monthly offer of $280.

After all, his current priority is to take a breather from the 16-hour days at his old job. “I lived like a walking corpse.”

Grueling working hours and a turbulent labor market force Chinese youth to make unusual decisions.

Julie is part of a growing number of young people calling themselves “full time kids”who return to the comforts of home because they long for a break from the exhausting working life or simply cannot find work.

Young Chinese people have always been told that the hard sacrifice of studying and graduating would be worth it, but now they feel defeated and trapped.

More than one in five young people between the ages of 16 and 24 are unemployedaccording to official figures published in May.

China’s youth unemployment rate today is the highest since authorities began publishing this data in 2018a statistic that does not include the national labor market.

Many of the so-called “full-time kids” say they expect to be home only temporarily. They see it as a time to relax, reflect and find better jobs. But this is easier said than done.

Julie has applied to over 40 job openings in the past two weeks and only received two calls.

“It was hard to find a job before I quit. Now it’s even harder,” he says.

Exhausted, unemployed or imprisoned?

The exhaustion that drives these adults to become “full-time kids” is not surprising in China, given China’s notoriously poor work-life balance.

The country’s work culture is often referred to as “996”, true many consider it the norm to work six days a week from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Chen Dudu, another “full-time daughter,” quit her real estate job early this year because she felt exhausted and undervalued.

The 27-year-old said she had “hardly anything left” after paying her rent.

Chen returned to her parents’ home in southern China and said she has “lived the life of a retiree,” but fear has plagued her.

He heard two voices in his head: “People say it’s rare to have this free time, so enjoy the moment. The other urges me to think about what to do next.

“If that had continued, I would have become a parasite,” says Chen, who has since started his own business.

Jack Zheng, who recently left Chinese giant Tencent, said so answered nearly 7,000 work messages outside of working hours every day. The 32-year-old calls this “invisible overtime” because it was expected but not compensated.

Zheng resigned after stress led to a severe bout of folliculitis, a skin disease in which hair follicles become inflamed.

He has since found work, but says many around him are not so lucky.

Many are faced with the so-called “35 curse”, a widespread belief in China that employers are less willing to hire workers over the age of 35. Instead, they prefer young people who are ‘less expensive’.

This double-edged sword of ageism and bleak job prospects is a challenge for those in their mid-thirties who have mortgages or are planning to start a family.

Hopelessness is no less among young university students. Many fail their exams on purpose to delay graduation.

In recent weeks, Chinese social media has been flooded with atypical graduation photos that speak of the disappointment of recent graduates. Some show young men “lying down” in graduation gowns and caps covering their faces; others are shown holding their diplomas over garbage cans, ready to throw them away.

The university was once a place for the elite in China. But between 2012 and 2022, enrollment rates rose from 30% to 59.6%, as more young people saw a university education as a gateway to better opportunities in a competitive job market.

However, aspirations turn to disappointment as the job market plummets. Experts say so youth unemployment threatens to worsen a record 11.6 million recent graduates are entering the market.

“The situation is pretty bad. People are tired and many are trying to unsubscribe. There is a lot of desperation,” said Miriam Wickertsheim, director of Shanghai-based recruitment agency Direct HR.

China’s slower-than-expected post-Covid economic recovery is a key reason for the high unemployment rate, said Bruce Pang, chief economist for Greater China at Jones Lang LaSalle.

Some employers are also less willing to hire graduates with blank resumes and less work experience than their predecessors due to pandemic lockdowns, Pang adds.

The Chinese government’s recent crackdown on industries popular with young Chinese professionals has also stifled the labor market.

Regulations against big tech companies, restrictions on the tutoring industry and a ban on foreign investment in private education have resulted in job losses.

“Slow employment”

Although the Chinese government is aware of these problems, it has tried to minimize them.

In May, President Xi Jinping was quoted on the front page of a Chinese Communist Party newspaper urging young people to “eat bitterness,” a translation of a Mandarin phrase that endures hardship.

Meanwhile, the state media has taken it upon itself to redefine unemployment.

Last week an editorial in the state newspaper Economical dailyused the term “slow employment”: While some young Chinese are unemployed, the paper said, others have “actively chosen slow employment.”

The origin of the phrase is obscure, but a 2018 article from the Chinese youth newspaper said that a growing number of college graduates took time to find jobs, and many chose to travel or teach for a short time. This, the Chinese were told, was “slow employment”.

This time, the definition includes those who have not found employment or who choose to continue their education, learn new skills or take a gap year.

As tough as the job market is, the paper advised citizens to “take action and work hard,” and as long as you do that, you don’t have to worry about losing your job.

However, given the current state of the labor market, the sentence and advice have not been well received. Some marveled at their government’s “refusal to acknowledge the unemployment situation”, while others reacted sarcastically.

“Chinese writing is so deep,” one user wrote on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service.

“Of course we are unemployed, but [los funcionarios han] inventor of the term ‘slow employment’. How slow would it be? A few months or a few years?”

Another user of Xiaohongshu, the Chinese equivalent of Instagram, said the term “suddenly puts a heavy burden on young people”.

“According to this explanation, the employment rate during the Great Depression in the US in the late 1920s should have been 100%, since most people had slow jobs. What a way to solve a global problem!”

“Unemployment is unemployment. We must call it what it issaid Nie Riming, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Finance and Law.

“There may indeed be young people who would like a gap year before starting their next job, but I think the vast majority of the current unemployed are desperate for a job but can’t find one.”