China’s record unemployment has some young people seeking simpler life

Gazing up at the faintly smiling Buddha, the Chinese youths kneel, raise smoldering sticks of incense in clasped hands, and silently make their wishes. Then they bow deeply, three times. 

Thousands of young people from around the country are making the pilgrimage to Yonghe Temple, a sprawling Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Beijing, to pray for good fortune – especially in finding jobs. 

“A lot of young people here are praying to the Buddha to help them find work,” says Qian Ninan, a college student from Inner Mongolia, adding that she hopes her petitions before the temple’s many Buddhas will smooth her own career journey.

“I am worried I may have trouble finding a job in the future,” says Ms. Qian, a student of Chinese-Mongolian translation, who made the trek to the Beijing temple on the May 1 Labor Day holiday. 

Even as China works to revive its economy after three years of strict lockdowns under the “zero-COVID” policy that ended in December, the unemployment rate for Chinese youth aged 16 to 24 has surged, reaching a record 20.4% last month. This comes as young Chinese are reconsidering work-life balance altogether, increasingly opting for less demanding jobs. With another 11.6 million college graduates flooding into the job market this year, the pressure is only likely to mount, experts say. And so will their search for comfort and hope as job seekers look for careers that align with their values.

“You had a huge expansion of university education in China over the last couple of decades,” creating a surplus of youth competing for limited white-collar jobs, says Andrew Batson, China research director for Gavekal Dragonomics, which covers macroeconomic and market trends in China. Meanwhile, “a lot of the jobs that the economy is creating are blue-collar jobs,” he adds. “It’s a mismatch in terms of people’s expectations.”

Struggle and rejuvenation

In response to the high unemployment and shifting youth attitudes, China’s leadership is urging today’s young people to double down. They should work harder and bear the “heavy responsibility of national rejuvenation,” in the words of a recent commentary in the Communist Party mouthpiece, People’s Daily. 

Top leader Xi Jinping is calling on young people to go labor in rural areas and temper themselves with hardship, as he did back in 1969, during Mao Zedong’s “down-to-the-countryside” campaign. “The hard life of going to the countryside for seven years was great training for me,” Mr. Xi was quoted as saying on May 4 in a front-page People’s Daily article featuring his ideas on the qualities of “good youth.”

Young people must prepare for “struggle,” the article continues. “If you choose a Buddha-like mindset, you won’t scale the peak of your career,” it says.

But the mood at the temple suggests youth are setting less lofty goals. Seeking relief from the pressure cooker of China’s job market, many say they want to carve out a more balanced life.

Leaving the temple after offering prayers, a college senior from the central city of Wuhan says that even with a computer science degree, he isn’t confident he’ll land a position at a major tech company. “It’s really hard to find a job in China now,” he says, withholding his name to protect his privacy. 

Instead, he says he’s simply looking for work that will allow him some free time often lacking in China’s “9-9-6” work culture: a 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. schedule, six days a week.

“I’ll be glad to just have a job with weekends off,” he says.

Seeking small-town life

Overall, Chinese youth are downgrading their career ambitions, official data suggests. They are more willing to accept lower pay, and live outside the more expensive “first-tier” mega-cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, according to a 2022 survey on employment trends of Chinese college students released by the State Council, China’s cabinet.

The survey found an “intensified mentality of graduates seeking stability and the pursuit of a comfortable life,” in part by pursuing work in state-run enterprises and public sector jobs. Indeed, those sectors have acted as a “ballast,” with more than a third of state-owned enterprises and state agencies increasing their overall number of jobs, the report said.

While revived economic growth and consumer spending will eventually create more jobs for young people, Mr. Batson from Gavekal Dragonomics says, and ease the current unemployment crisis, it’s less clear how that will impact the shifting youth attitudes.

“People are making lifestyle decisions,” says Zak Dychtwald, founder and CEO of the Shanghai-based Young China Group. While older Chinese were willing to work 60 to 80 hours a week to get their families ahead, “this younger generation is far more oriented towards living in the moment,” he says.

The gravitation toward the security of government jobs “risks a decrease in innovation, which China can’t really afford,” he says.

Xie Taoyao, a college freshman who recently visited Beijing’s Yonghe temple with her boyfriend, embodies such trends.

Ms. Xie recently decided it will be too hard to get a job after finishing the engineering management degree she’s enrolled in. Instead, she plans to return to her hometown in Hebei Province after graduation and become a teacher. 

Back home, “my parents will be closer and everything will be convenient,” she says. Her boyfriend, from the same town, plans to return, too. 

“In the first-tier cities the pressure is quite great, but it’s less in smaller towns,” she says. “A lot of the young people around me feel the same way.” 

Kneeling before one Buddha after another at the temple, Ms. Xie said she gained a sense of determination and hope. “It was a way to encourage myself,” she says.