SHANGHAI\/HANGZHOU: Every weekday morning, Xiao Ding, 30, begins her day like most other young working professionals in Beijing.<\/p>\n
She gets dressed, gathers her things and then heads out to a public library, where she sets up her laptop and spends the day \u201cworking\u201d.<\/p>\n
Except she\u2019s unemployed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t told my family that I quit my job,\u201d she said. \u201cUntil I find where my future lies, I don\u2019t want to pass on my anxiety to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The routine, according to her, is not about deception but discipline. After nearly eight years in tech marketing, she quit her job in 2023 and has now been unemployed for 22 months.<\/p>\n
\u201cI choose to pretend to work for two reasons: One, to keep a regular daily schedule. Two, to give myself the pressure of \u2018going to work\u2019,\u201d Xiao shared with CNA.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the search has been punishing. Even after sending out more than a thousand resumes, she has only landed four interviews – all of which were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
\u201cI chalk it up to the (current) hiring climate being poor,\u201d Xiao said.<\/p>\n
During the lowest point of her job search, she spent entire days in bed doomscrolling on her phone.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMy whole body hurt from it,\u201d she said. \u201cThat was when I really understood what \u2018living in a daze\u2019 meant. I felt I had no value to society at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
And she isn\u2019t alone.<\/p>\n
In China, fresh graduates and young adults unable to find jobs are coping by playing pretend – heading to libraries and cafes to maintain a semblance of a working environment amid harsh realities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
China\u2019s youth unemployment rate rose to its highest level in 11 months in July. The urban jobless rate for the 16-24 age group, excluding students, rose to 17.8 per cent, as a record number of graduates entered the job market.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SHANGHAI\/HANGZHOU: Every weekday morning, Xiao Ding, 30, begins her day like most other young working professionals in Beijing.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[84,891,1371,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-128291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-china","10":"tag-jobs","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}