Young adults in unemployment in China who claim to have a job

Nobody would like to work without obtaining a salary, or even worse – to have to pay to be there.

However, paying businesses so that you can pretend to work for them has become popular among young unemployed adults in China. This has led to an increasing number of these suppliers.

Development is involved in the midfielder of the China economy and jobs. Chinese young people unemployment remains stubbornly high, more than 14%.

With real jobs increasingly difficult to find, some young adults prefer to pay to go to an office than to be stuck at home.

Shui Zhou, 30, had a commercial company that failed in 2024. In April of this year, he began to pay 30 yuan ($ 4.20; $ 3.10) per day to go to a model office led by a company called Fretend To Work Company, in the city of Dongguan, 114 km (71 miles) north of Hong Kong.

There he joins five “colleagues” who do the same thing.

“I feel very happy,” explains Mr. Zhou. “It’s like working together in a group.”

Such operations now appear in the big cities of China, including Shenzhen, Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan, Chengdu and Kunming. Most often, they look like fully functional offices and are equipped with computers, internet access, meeting rooms and tea rooms.

And rather than seated participants, they can use computers to search for jobs or try to launch their own start -up business. Sometimes daily costs, generally between 30 and 50 yuan, include lunch, snacks and drinks.

Dr. Christian Yao, lecturer at the Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Management in New Zealand, is an expert in the Chinese economy.

“The phenomenon of pretending to work is now very common,” he says. “Due to the economic transformation and the inadequacy between education and the labor market, young people need these places to think about their next steps or to make jobs in transition.

“The pretended office companies are one of the transitional solutions.”

Mr. Zhou came across work bankruptcy by browsing the Xiaohongshu social media site. He said he thought the office environment would improve his self -discipline. He has now been there for more than three months.

Mr. Zhou sent photos of the office to his parents, and he says they feel much more comfortable about his lack of use.

While participants can arrive and leave when they wish, Mr. Zhou generally arrives at the office between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. Sometimes he does not leave before 11 p.m., starting only after the departure of the director of the company.

He adds that other people are now like friends. He says that when someone is busy, like job search, he works hard, but when he has free time, he chats, jokes and plays games. And they often dine together after work.

Mr. Zhou says that he loves this team building and that he is much happier than before joining.

In Shanghai, Xiaowen Tang rented a workstation in an alleged work company in Shanghai for a month earlier this year. The 23 -year -old graduated from the university last year and has not yet found a full -time job.

His university has an unwritten rule according to which students must sign an employment contract or provide proof of internship in the year following the diploma; Otherwise, they will not receive a diploma.

She sent the office scene to school as proof of her internship. In reality, she paid daily costs and sat in the office by writing novels online to earn pocket money.

“If you are going to simulate, just simulate it until the end,” says Tang.

Dr. Biao Xiang, director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany, says that the alleged tendency of China to work comes from a “feeling of frustration and helplessness” with regard to the lack of employment opportunities.

“Pretending to work is a shell that young people find by themselves, creating a slight distance from traditional society and giving themselves a little space.”

The owner of the pride of work in the city of Dongguan is Feiyu, 30 years old (pseudonym). “What I am selling is not a workstation, but the dignity of not being a useless person,” he said.

He was himself unemployed in the past, after a previous detail case he owned had to close during the cocovated pandemic. “I was very depressed and a little self-destructive,” he recalls. “You wanted to turn the trend, but you were helpless.”

In April of this year, he began to advertise to pretend to work, and in a month, all the workstations were full. New carpenters must apply.

Feiyu says that 40% of customers are recent university graduates who come to take photos to prove their internship experience to their former tutors. While a small number of them help to face their parents’ pressure.

The 60% others are freelancers, many of whom are digital nomads, including those working for large electronic commerce companies and cyberspace writers. The average age is around 30 years, the youngest being 25 years old.

Officially, these workers are called “flexible employment professionals”, a grouping which also includes carpooling drivers and trucker.

In the longer term, Feiyu says it is questionable if the company will remain profitable. Instead, he likes to see it more as a social experience.

“He uses lies to maintain respectability, but that allows some people to find the truth,” he said. “If we only help users to extend their actor skills, we are accomplices of slight deception.

“It is only by helping them to transform their false workplace into a real starting point that this social experience can really be up to its promise.”

Mr. Zhou is now spending most of his time improving his AI skills. He says he has noticed that some companies specify the mastery of AI tools during recruitment. He therefore thinks he acquires such skills in AI “will facilitate more” for him to find a full -time job.