Unemployment? China Is Offering Salary To Youth To Be ‘Full Time Children’

Young Chinese people have begun giving up their jobs to join the expanding armies of children in China who are being paid by their families to stay at home. Here’s an example of one such ‘full time child’. Li, 21, now spends her days in the capital city of Luoyang caring for her dementia-afflicted grandma and grocery shopping for her family. Her parents give her a 6,000 yuan (USD 835) monthly salary, which is regarded as a good middle-class wage in her neighborhood, which is better than unemployment.

She says, “The reason why I am at home is because I can’t bear the pressure of going to school or work,” said Li, a high school graduate, adding, “I don’t want to compete intensely with my peers. So I choose to ‘lie flat’ completely.”

“I don’t necessarily need a higher-paid job or a better life,” she added.

Li is not alone it seems

Li is not the only one in this ‘profession’. Additionally, the idea of “full-time sons and daughters,” a term that first appeared on the well-known Chinese social networking site Douban late last year, isn’t just driven by annoyance.

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Is unemployment the reason behind all this?

Tens of thousands of young people who identify as such on social media say, for the most part, that they are moving back home because they can’t find work. The employment rate for those between the ages of 16 and 24 in urban areas rose to a record-high 21.3% last month.

Youth unemployment has joined a host of challenges facing the country, including weak domestic demand, a retreat by private industry, and a collapsing real estate market, as the post-Covid rebound fizzles out. Furthermore, the problem could actually be much worse than what the government’s statistics suggests.

The term is now used on other social media platforms. More than 40,000 postings using the hashtag “full-time sons and daughters” have been published recently on Xiaohongshu, the most popular lifestyle website in China among young people.