A Chinese professor announced publicly that youth unemployment in China is so bad that he claims it hit close to 50% in March. The National Bureau of Statistics spins a different story, saying the jobless rate for young people there is 19.7%, but Professor Zhang Dandan said the official study is not considering something called “lying flat.”
That is a term that relates to the 16 million non-students who are living at home or relying on their parents, according to a Reuters report. Considering those people, the professor said the unemployment number is 46.5%.
Zhang has credentials; she is the Associate Professor of Economics at Peking University’s National School f Development. Her report has caused a stir in China. She claims young people have abandoned hope of finding high-paid white-collar jobs, and many have headed home to live with their parents. That has spawned the popular social media phrases of “lying flat” (which was coined in 2021 and referred to millennials protesting the competition for good jobs by resting and relaxing) and “letting it rot”(which Gen-Z and millennial Chinese youth use to describe leaning into self-indulgence and away from the pipe dream of finding worthwhile employment).
China is simultaneously experiencing a stalled economy and low birthrate numbers, and now the youth who want good-paying jobs can’t find them. Public-sector jobs are so competitive that CNN reported that 30,000 people applied for three job openings at a city government.
Stories like that have led to many young people giving up hope of starting the career they dreamed of.
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