In recent times, there have been increasing reports in the media about young white-collar workers at major Chinese internet companies choosing to downgrade their jobs, opting to give up high-pressure office work and instead choose flexible blue-collar “light physical labor” jobs, finding reduced stress and a more relaxed mood afterward.
However, the bigger reason behind this is the overall deterioration of the political and economic environment in mainland China, with the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown on private enterprises and the service industry leading to a significant shrinkage in white-collar jobs. The authorities are also vigorously promoting the narrative of transitioning from white-collar to blue-collar work, attempting to cover up policy mistakes. Experts also point out that due to the economic downturn in China, both blue-collar and white-collar jobs have become highly insular.
With the slowdown of the Chinese economy, reduced foreign investment, and declining consumption, Chinese tech companies are gradually losing appeal. The market value of the top five listed technology companies in mainland China has declined by around $1.3 trillion from the peak in 2021, with many companies laying off employees and imposing stricter demands on those remaining.
A former employee of Pinduoduo told the Financial Times that during her two years at the company, the long working hours made it difficult for her to maintain social connections, hobbies, or even romantic relationships. She mentioned feeling like she “reintegrated into society” after leaving.
A developer at Tencent Games also admitted that work often consumes one’s entire being. “Outwardly, I appear calm,” he said, “but the pressure is immense. We are constantly grinding like gears until we break due to lack of lubrication.”
Sun Guoxiang, an associate professor of International Affairs and Business at South China University of Technology, mentioned that the work stress for high-tech employees in mainland China is increasing. The rapid technological advancements in the industry require employees to continuously stay at the forefront, maintaining competitiveness. Additionally, the high-tech industry requires significant investment, leading to financial needs and listing pressures. The demanding nature of the 996 work system has led to vicious cycles of internal competition. Lastly, the high-tech industry is fragile, and any economic fluctuations or market changes could result in layoffs or unemployment.
“High-intensity work pressure in tech companies leaves employees physically and mentally exhausted, prompting some to opt for downgrades to blue-collar status, especially for young people who cannot cope with prolonged high-pressure work, they might leave the industry or shift to other countries,” Sun Guoxiang stated.
According to the latest statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics of the Communist Party of China, in June this year, the average weekly working hours for Chinese laborers was 48.6 hours, an increase of 2.9 hours compared to the same period in 2019. From 2015 to 2020, the average weekly working hours increased by 1.5 hours, and from 2020 to 2023, the increment grew to 2 hours.
A report released by Zhaopin recently showed that 67.2% of white-collar workers work more than 8 hours a day, higher than blue-collar workers in the service industry. When white-collar workers are stuck in the 996 work culture, some blue-collar workers may have already finished work and gone home.
Internet companies are where young people congregate. The data from the professional social network app Maimai in 2020 showed that the average age of employees at companies like ByteDance and Pinduoduo was 27, at Kwai was 28, and at Didi was 33.
Niu Baoshu, a former backend development engineer at an internet company, mentioned that the internet industry is fast-paced and constantly changing. Only by quickly entering a certain field, seizing opportunities, and being at the forefront can one make money. Once you fall behind, you are eliminated.
“Therefore, it is very brain-intensive, we prefer young people, we call it ‘eating youth meals.’ Once a person gets old, their brain cannot keep up,” he said. The internet industry essentially blurs the line between work and non-work time; it’s all about 996, being on call 24 hours a day, setting specific goals by superiors that must be achieved within a set timeframe. Internet giants are now focused on saving money, increasing efficiency, optimizing personnel, making one person do the work of two.
“This results in tremendous pressure on employees, I have heard of many suicides in the internet industry,” he added.
The workplace culture of “996” in tech companies has become a driving factor for many employees to resign, especially young people. Around 2023, social media in mainland China saw topics emerging like the “Light Physical Labor Exploration Alliance” and “My First Experience with Light Physical Labor.”
These descriptions in the tags state: “From owners of fast-food restaurants, janitors, service staff, to pet groomers, young people are trying to regain control over their lives and inner peace through these ‘no-brainer’ physical labor jobs.”
In February of last year, a post titled “Shenzhen Design Girl Escapes from Big Corporations to Become a Pet Groomer” went viral on the internet.
Luo, a post-’90s, claimed to have studied art for twenty years, graduated from a top-tier college, and worked in unicorn startups and major corporations. However, the high-intensity endless overtime left her physically and mentally exhausted: “Working until 6 a.m. one day, I felt like I was drifting. During that time, I would just come home, shower, sleep, with no energy to do anything, no friends, and no significant other.”
She later found a job as a pet groomer. “The feeling at work is truly super happy! After sending off the little cuties, finishing cleaning, you can go home. There’s no need to worry about work matters after leaving like before,” she wrote.
In mid-February last year, a girl with the online pseudonym “Brain Has a Hat” wrote a note titled “ByteDance Woman Switches to Selling Fast Food,” saying that work pressure was too great. After gaining 30 pounds in six months due to stress, palpitations, and insomnia, she decided to resign and return to Shenzhen to open a fast-food restaurant.
“Just buy vegetables, wash vegetables, cut vegetables, cook, serve dishes, and wash dishes before getting off work. Although the body is tired, the mood is very cheerful,” she wrote.
“I know many white-collar workers in Beijing, including employees from PricewaterhouseCoopers, who work part-time at seaside bars on weekends,” Wei Zhen (alias), who works for an internet platform company in mainland China, told Epoch Times. Apart from the store managers, seaside bars have no fixed employees and mainly hire part-time workers. People find washing dishes, plates, cups, and pouring beer in the bar very relaxing.
Ultimately, the real issue may not be the high intensity of 996 work but rather the blockage of career advancement opportunities, coupled with a bleak economic outlook and a sense of despair in mainland China.
Wei Zhen believes that the tech industry in China is now saturated, with slower overall development, decreasing incomes across the board, but working hours have not reduced.
“Although we used to work overtime to earn a lot of money, now incomes are going down while overtime is still required, not due to actual workload. Administrative departments demand it, so we can only pretend to work diligently. It is mentally exhausting,” she stated.
The phenomenon of white-collar workers transitioning into blue-collar jobs not only aims to evade work pressure but is more significantly driven by the deteriorating political and economic environment in mainland China, with the Chinese Communist Party exerting pressure on private enterprises and the service industry shrinking. Traditional major employers like internet tech, education, and real estate are contracting. Those who cannot find professional work, especially young people, have to resort to blue-collar jobs.
With the implementation of the national security law and anti-spy law by the CCP, the business environment for foreign companies in China has deteriorated, leading to the withdrawal or downsizing of a large number of foreign enterprises, resulting in a significant loss of Chinese employees.
For some university graduates, engaging in manual labor is not their preferred choice. Fields such as technology, education, real estate, and foreign enterprises still remain some of the better options, but such positions have been dwindling.
Mr. Chen, who works at a tech company in Beijing, mentioned that their company is also not doing well, with many people being laid off. “Jobs like those in tech companies are hard to come by. It is now easier to find labor-intensive jobs like working at TikTok,” he said.
Xiao Jiang, 37, works for a top IT internet technology service company in mainland China and belongs to the top 500 companies nationwide. Xiao Jiang’s qualifications had allowed him to climb up to the core technical level within the company. However, last year, he felt the pressures brought about by the economic downturn.
He mentioned that the annual bonuses received decreased, and the company terminated the chief engineer for receiving too high a pension which the company could not afford.
Since 2021, Alibaba and Tencent have laid off tens of thousands of employees. In March this year, reports revealed that ByteDance had begun laying off employees from its department “Feishu,” affecting around 1,000 employees. Other companies like Tencent, Xiaomi, JD.com, Kuaishou Technology, Didi Chuxing, Bilibili, and Weibo have also initiated layoffs.
The “Talent Migration Report of the Digital Age 2023” revealed a 21.67% year-on-year decrease in total job positions recruited by businesses in 2022. The contraction in the internet industry was particularly severe, with a 50.4% year-on-year decrease in pure internet job positions in 2022.
A former employee who recently left TikTok told the Financial Times that avoiding unemployment feels like a game as their platform continuously shrinks randomly, forcing them to jump around to avoid being left behind. “There’s always the feeling of potential dismissal. Everyone is tense, very worried,” he shared.
Wei Zhen pointed out that the internet industry hasn’t been developing well over the past two years. For instance, from cities to rural areas, nearly everyone has WeChat, so how much potential user growth can be expected?
“Now, WeChat is beginning to offer video accounts to increase revenue. But that’s tough because when internet companies were rapidly growing, each one was carving out its niche. For instance, Meituan and Alipay worked on takeouts and local services, Douyin and Kuaishou focused on short videos, Bilibili created middle to long videos, and WeChat primarily focused on communication and payments. Once these patterns were established, if you want to increase revenue, you’ll likely have to enter other companies’ territories, which isn’t easy,” Wei Zhen mentioned.
“I often hear that people driving for Didi would say, the drivers who used to work in internet companies like me became Didi drivers,” he added.
Niu Baoshu expressed that the primary reason lies in the broader environment. Previously, to promote employment, the government provided many benefits to the internet industry, and people were willing to invest. However, Xi Jinping started cracking down on the internet sector, causing a lack of investment and an overall industry contraction, which couldn’t accommodate so many people, leading to mass layoffs.
“In 2022 during the pandemic, the government shut down our app, which directly resulted in company layoffs,” Niu Baoshu said. Most people resigned involuntarily; there might have been some who voluntarily resigned, but fewer. Even if they quit, they would still look for work in the same industry rather than switch to food delivery, which is unlikely. Because the internet industry still offers better prospects than other industries, and people ultimately seek income.
Xiao Jiang told Epoch Times that as a software engineer, high work stress is well-known, with going to bed at one or two in the morning daily being the norm. Although he hadn’t planned on staying in the job for the long term since he joined, abrupt resignation wasn’t something he had thought about in the short term due to recently purchasing a house. However, the chief engineer’s dismissal made him reconsider and prepare for his next steps.
Since May last year, the youth unemployment rate in mainland China surged to 20%. To cover up policy mistakes, the state media called on university students to take off their gowns and engage in blue-collar work, emulating the down-to-earth experiences of educated youth during the Cultural Revolution moving to rural areas to “seek hardship.”
However, traditional white-collar positions are seeing a significant decrease. According to Zhaopin’s data, the recruitment information from only real estate, counseling, and tech companies accounted for over half of all recruitment information in 2021. A year later, this figure dropped to 26%.
According to the estimates by CECRC Research Center, the number of real estate development employees in China decreased to around 1.6 million in 2023 from the peak of 2.1 million in 2021, showing nearly 500,000 losses.
According to Bloomberg Economics, by 2026, the real estate industry’s share may shrink to around 16% of China’s GDP. This could put around 5 million people at risk of unemployment or reduced income.
China’s education auxiliary industry once had a market size exceeding 3 trillion yuan, with over ten million employees. However, after the CCP introduced the “double reduction” policy in 2021, these positions also disappeared or transitioned underground.
Many of the new jobs created in China in recent years have been lower-end blue-collar positions. In a report released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of China in 2022, occupations like salespersons, automobile assembly line operators, delivery drivers, restaurant servers, retail salespersons, domestic helpers, cleaners, security guards, packagers, and lathe operators ranked among the top 10 most severely affected positions experiencing labor shortages.
Zhaopin’s latest survey in June revealed that the demand for blue-collar jobs such as delivery drivers, truck drivers, service staff, and technicians increased by 3.8 times in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2019.
These are not the high-paying, high-skilled positions that university graduates typically aspire to, but with white-collar positions decreasing, many people have had to consider downgrading their employment.
Zhaopin’s survey showed that the number of people aged 25 and under applying for blue-collar jobs surged by 165% in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2019.
The “2023 Spring Talent Migration Report” indicated a noticeable trend towards job stability, with only fewer than 15% of employees actively seeking job changes, while approximately 45% of job seekers considered downgrading their employment.
The “Chinese Enterprise Recruitment Compensation Report” revealed that in the first quarter of this year, 51.9% of surveyed workplace individuals were willing to choose blue-collar jobs.
Wang Guochen, an assistant researcher at the China Economic Research Institute, mentioned that the trend of job downgrading is normal, as Xi Jinping emphasizes moving towards practicality, shifting from the third-level service sector back to the second level industrial or manufacturing sectors. Therefore, the service industry job vacancies are shrinking, and new entrants or career changers are likely to move towards industrial or manufacturing sectors.
He explained that the capital-intensive high-tech industry doesn’t require as many employees since it is not a labor-intensive industry. Recently, Meituan announced plans to replace delivery drivers with self-driving vehicles. The further the development in high-tech industries, the fewer job opportunities they create, resulting in increased unemployment pressure.
“Since the majority can still be absorbed by the service industry, but the service industry is being suppressed, it’s foreseeable that mainland China’s unemployment issues will worsen,” Wang Guochen stated.
As for the challenges faced in the Chinese economy and employment, the measures proposed by the CCP authorities do not aim at solving the people’s welfare. Wang Guochen explained that the evolution of the Chinese economy doesn’t seem optimistic, especially with Xi Jinping pushing for technological self-sufficiency, focusing on industries like semiconductors and chips. The emphasis is on resolving the issue of technological autonomy to compete with the U.S., not worrying about how far the economy could decline. With so much money poured in, the desired effects might not be achieved, leading to a disaster for the Chinese economy. “Government-led industries have failed historically,” he stated.
Wang Guochen added that if the CCP regime continues, a continuous downward spiral will be observed, without any end in sight, until there’s an overthrow of power.
“The fundamental problem lies with the CCP itself; since the CCP is the ruling party, it should take responsibility for the economic chaos. It’s become a disaster for the Chinese economy,” Sun Guoxiang commented.
As a news reporter, I have provided you with a comprehensive, rewritten, and translated version of the news article, incorporating additional explanations to elaborate on the different facets discussed in the original piece.