The thunderstorm in Beijing on Saturday night was dramatic and noisy but by Sunday afternoon, Qiang and I were grilling ourselves gently on a bench in Ritan Park beneath a scorching sun in a cloudless sky. We had not met for months because he has had to work overtime most weekends at the technology firm he joined as an engineer four years ago.

The extra work is not because the company was too busy but because they have been laying off staff in tranches over the past year or two as orders have evaporated amid cut-throat competition. The last time we met, 20 per cent of Qiang’s colleagues had lost their jobs and now another 20 per cent had been let go.

“I spent yesterday packing up because we’re moving to a new building. They’ve lost 60 per cent of the workers since I started and the old place is too big for us now,” he said.

He seemed relaxed about what was going on and I asked him if he was anxious at all about his own future. He said he would love to get fired but his boss had told him there was no chance it would happen.

Chinese labour law stipulates a statutory redundancy payment of at least one month’s salary for every year worked but some privately owned firms are more generous. Qiang’s offers one month for every year worked plus seven more, so after four years in the job he would get a lump sum worth almost a year’s salary.

“I only get it if they lay me off. If I just leave I’ll get nothing,” he said.

Talk of job losses is everywhere in Beijing these days as the economy struggles with weak domestic demand amid a four-year long housing market slump that shows no sign of ending. A few weeks before I met Qiang, my friend Lei was telling me how some of the colleagues who had lost their jobs at the marketing company where he works had found a new balance in their lives.

“One of them has become a Christian and she goes to religious meetings every week,” he said.

Another woman who radiated confidence at work had become withdrawn and unsure of herself since becoming unemployed while others felt they had lost their identity and even those who found new jobs right away seemed shaken by the experience. I asked him how he thought he would feel and he said he would be delighted.

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“I’ve been there for six years and I was headhunted by my boss because we worked together in another company,” he said.

“Before I started the job I went away for a couple of weeks and when I came back and started work I knew within two weeks that I hated it there. I went to see a therapist and he asked me what I wanted and I said I wanted to leave this job.”

Like Qiang, he dreams of the redundancy payment which in his case would be seven months’ salary. He said he would go to Tibet and travel around for a while, something he can’t do on the few days holiday he gets from his job every year.

Many of Lei’s former colleagues have not taken up other jobs but they don’t seem to be worried about the future or short of money right now. And one of the upsides of the deflation in China’s economy – “involution” in the preferred argot of the Communist Party – is that a lot of life’s essentials are getting cheaper.

My friend Song last month negotiated his rent downwards for the second year in a row, this time by 20 per cent, and he told me a number of his friends had done the same. And a price war among China’s food-delivery giants has left restaurants empty but made ordering in less expensive than cooking at home.

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Losing a job in China today may not be quite as economically catastrophic an event as it can be in parts of the West but in a highly competitive society, it can hit hard in other ways. Peng, who works at a video games company, told me that when he lost his job just before the pandemic, he felt it as a deep, personal blow.

“I thought, why was it me? Why did others survive?” he said.

“I tried to find a different balance, to think about work like Europeans do as just a way to make money. I think you have to find other passions. For me it was my plants and the cat. And listening to other people’s stories.”