A household service company in Shanghai’s general manager stated on September 22 that there are many “post-2000s” employees in the company, with most of the young employees being college students, including some doctoral students.
According to the report by “First Financial”, Liao Juncong, the general manager of LeapFrog Family Service (Shanghai) Limited, mentioned that there are many “post-2000s” in the household service industry of the company, “most of the young people are college students, including doctoral students.”
Liao Juncong expressed that in the past, many household service personnel treated this job as a part-time temporary job, coming out to work whenever they had time and could return to their hometown at any time. Nowadays, more people see household services as a long-term career, using it as the main source of income for their families.
Statistics from China’s National Bureau of Statistics show that in August, the unemployment rate of urban non-students aged 16 to 24 in mainland China was 18.9%, up by 1 percentage point from July, reaching a new high in a year, and the unemployment rate of non-students aged 25 to 29 has also risen to 7.5%.
However, the official unemployment rate’s accuracy in reflecting the real employment situation has been questioned. Xu Zhen, a senior market professional in China, previously told Epoch Times that the official statistics by the Chinese Communist Party count low-paying, short-hour, and insecure jobs as employment, while young people who have given up job hunting are not included in the unemployment statistics. He believes that such statistical handling beautifies the youth unemployment rate, and the actual employment situation is more severe than what the official numbers suggest.
Data from the Chinese Ministry of Education shows that the number of graduates from mainland Chinese universities in 2026 is expected to reach 12.7 million, an increase of 480,000 from the previous year, hitting a new historical high.
An August report from “Hubei Daily” mentioned Zhang Ruru, a 25-year-old who graduated in visual communication design in 2023 and spent nearly two years studying at home but without results. After starting to look for a job in 2025, she became a household cleaner, initially planning to work for a few months as a transition, and has now been in the industry for over a year.
In a public report in February this year, English major graduate Xiao He was introduced to a household as a live-in nanny in Shanghai through a household service company, mainly responsible for reading English picture books with children, engaging in English conversations, and driving for pickups and drop-offs.
In November 2024, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Education, among five other departments in China, issued a document requiring universities and vocational schools to establish more household-related majors and support the establishment of coordination mechanisms between household service companies and institutions, actively recruiting graduates into the household service industry.
Li Qiang, the founder of the non-governmental organization “China Labor Watch”, previously told Epoch Times about the above policies, stating that the economic downturn and consumption downgrade will also squeeze the demand for household services, middle-class families that are able to employ household staff in the long term are also facing income and unemployment pressures.
He believes that the Chinese Communist Party’s encouragement for university graduates to enter the household service industry is an attempt to shift the responsibility of youth unemployment to young people and to create the narrative that “there are plenty of job opportunities, but college students are unwilling to do them”, evading the economic downturn and insufficient job positions.
These policies have sparked ridicule among netizens. A netizen from Yunnan commented, “The hardworking cleaning aunt painstakingly raised her daughter to graduate from college, only to become colleagues with her daughter.” Another netizen mentioned that college graduates continuously turning to jobs such as cleaning and delivery that originally did not require high qualifications reflects the “rapid devaluation of diplomas.”