【Epoch Times, May 26, 2025】 The Chinese real estate market continues to decline as the economy worsens, unemployment remains high, and a trend of young people choosing not to marry emerges, making the outlook for the real estate industry bleak.
The number of “singles and childless” young people in China is increasing. Over the past decade, the marriage rate in China has been declining, plummeting by nearly 21% last year alone.
According to statistics from China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs, in 2024, there were approximately 6.1 million registered marriages nationwide, a decrease of 20.5% from 2023, marking the largest drop since records began in 1978, and less than half of the peak in 2013. In the first three months of 2025, there were 1.81 million registered marriages nationwide, a decrease of 159,000 couples compared to the same period last year.
During this year’s May Day holiday, the wedding order volume in mainland China reportedly decreased significantly. Financial experts pointed out that based on data from wedding companies across the country, the wedding order volume during the May Day holiday was down by over 40%, and the volume of wedding dress rental business was only at 60% compared to the same period in 2019.
A real estate blogger from Xichang City, Liangshan Prefecture, Sichuan Province, recently stated in a video that there were significantly fewer people getting married during the May Day holiday this year. The wedding boom during May Day has disappeared, indicating not only a winter for the wedding industry but also a precursor to a storm in the real estate market.
The blogger mentioned that although urbanization is booming nationwide, it is still very difficult for young people to buy a house. Even with a reduced down payment of 15%, a 90-square-meter apartment still costs over a million yuan. Young people who earn over ten thousand yuan a month would have to save up for 12 years to afford it. With job opportunities becoming scarce for young people, how can they afford to get married? When owning a wedding house is no longer a necessity, what will happen to the real estate market?
The National Bureau of Statistics of China recently released data for April, showing that the unemployment rate of the 16 to 24 age group in urban areas, excluding students, hit a record low of 15.8% this year. However, there are ongoing doubts about the accuracy of official data.
In mid-2023, the official youth unemployment rate reached a record high of 21.3%. Zhang Dandan, an economist from Peking University, believes that the youth unemployment rate might actually be as high as 46.5%. In August 2023, the government announced a suspension of the release of this data, and five months later, a modified figure of 14.9% (excluding students) was released.
It is estimated that the scale of college graduates in China in 2025 will reach 12.22 million, hitting a historical high. Many young people are actually considered to be in a state of “flexible employment,” which in reality means they are essentially unemployed.
Yuan Li, a scholar from Hubei Province, mentioned that the zero-COVID policy implemented by the Chinese authorities over the past three years has severely crippled the Chinese economy. With the declining income, unstable jobs, and fragile salary growth expectations among many young people, embracing a lifestyle of “lying flat,” not getting married, and not having children has become a widespread phenomenon.
She noted that in the past, unmarried individuals over the age of 30 were mostly concentrated in major cities, but now there are plenty of unmarried people in their early thirties in rural areas and small towns. Young people are losing interest in buying houses, she added, as it has become a luxury they can hardly afford.
American economist David Huang pointed out that the low marriage rate coupled with high youth unemployment would lead to a structural collapse in the real estate market. When marriage is no longer a norm, and the unemployment rate remains in double digits, the society at large spirals inwardly, causing ruptures in both the real estate and economic sectors.
He believes that a shift in China’s societal values has been influenced by official promotion of feminism over the past decade, which has disrupted traditional family values and led to a breakdown of trust between individuals, making it difficult for young people to trust each other and thus complicating the possibility of forming successful marriages.