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CNN
—
Leon Li once played a low-profile but vital role at one of China’s biggest technology companies.
As a manager, she worked day and night to schedule meetings, prepare documents, and provide her boss with all the support she needed.
But in February, she left her job, leaving behind a stable career and a comfortable salary.
Something a little less stressful is cleaning the house.
“Every morning when my alarm went off, all I could see was my crappy future,” she told CNN, recalling her office job.
Li, 27, is part of a growing number of Chinese workers who are leaving high-pressure office jobs for more flexible blue-collar work.
Many of them once worked for some of the country’s largest companies.
But these companies are increasingly losing appeal as the Chinese economy faces headwinds including a real estate crisis, declining foreign investment and sluggish consumption.
China’s economy grew 4.7% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2024, below economists’ expectations and the slowest growth since the first quarter of last year, according to the latest data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday.
The grueling long hours and dwindling resources have led employees like Li to reconsider whether it’s worth sacrificing their time and health to get a higher wage.
“I like cleaning. As living standards improve (nationwide), demand for housekeeping services increases and the market keeps expanding,” said Li, who lives in Wuhan, a major city in central China.
But more importantly, she feels happier.
“What’s changed with this medicine is that I no longer feel dizzy. The mental pressure has also decreased. I have more energy every day,” she said.
Lee isn’t the only white-collar worker who has found a better work-life balance by swapping office work for manual labor.
Alice Wang, 30, who uses a pseudonym for privacy reasons, used to work for one of China’s leading livestreaming e-commerce platforms, earning an annual salary of 700,000 yuan ($96,310).
But she quit in April and moved from the picturesque, high-tech city of Hangzhou to the more laid-back Chengdu, where rent is cheaper, to take up a job as a pet groomer.
China’s notorious “996” work culture — a practice of working six days a week from 9am to 9pm that is widespread in China’s tech companies, startups and other private companies — is driving many employees to quit.
Wang recalled feeling weak and “very lifeless and stagnant” at her previous job, where she spent most of her time working.
But now she feels differently.
“The feeling of growth is relatively good,” she said, adding that she is currently undergoing grooming training and has ambitions to one day open her own shop. “That’s the long-term plan,” she said.
The trend of moving from professional to manual jobs comes amid a surge in demand for blue-collar workers, according to Chinese recruitment platform Zhaopin.
Courtesy of Leon Lee
Leon Li, a Wuhan resident, recently left his job at a major technology company to work in the cleaning industry.
The latest survey, released in June, showed that demand for blue-collar workers
Employment of food delivery workers, truck drivers, waiters, technicians and other roles surged 3.8 times in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2019.
After three years of COVID-19 lockdowns and the rise of takeaway food, demand for delivery workers has increased by 800%, the fastest growing category.
And wages are rising for blue-collar workers, encouraging more people to take jobs they might have avoided before.
The explosion of online shopping has seen delivery drivers’ average monthly wages rise 45.3 percent since 2019, from 5,581 yuan ($768) to 8,109 yuan ($1,116), according to the survey.
But for some college graduates, a manual labor job isn’t their first choice.
As the economy slows, the corporate job market is becoming more competitive, making it harder for new graduates to find employment.
The survey also found that the number of people under the age of 25 applying for blue-collar jobs in the first quarter of this year increased by 165% compared to the same period in 2019.
China’s unemployment rate for 16-24 year olds hit a staggering 21.3% in June 2023, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, after which it suspended publication of the figures for several months to adjust its methodology.
Officials restored the data in January, but it excluded about 62 million students, whose main task should be studying, not job hunting, they said.
Courtesy of Leon Lee
Wuhan is the capital of Hubei province in central China and a major commercial city.
According to the Office for National Statistics, the unemployment rate for work-seekers aged 16 to 24 has fluctuated between 14.2% and 15.3% in recent months.
China’s service sector, private enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises, once major sources of employment for young workers, have been hit hard by sluggish consumer demand, Macquarie Bank economists Larry Hu and Zhang Yuxiao wrote in a research report last year.
David Goodman, director of the Centre for China Studies at the University of Sydney, said:
There is a mismatch between the types of graduates universities are producing and what the market really needs.
He said China’s economy is shifting towards high-tech, green technology and the service industry, but university education remains focused on outdated or saturated sectors such as manufacturing and public services.
“The higher education system is not adapting.
“It was adapted to the rapid changes in the structure of the economy,” he explained.
But some question whether blue-collar work is really the stress-free haven that people like Li and Wang imagine it to be.
A recent video that went viral on Chinese social media shows how things can go wrong: It shows a barista in Shanghai becoming enraged at a customer who threatened to file a complaint.
In a rage, he threw coffee grounds at her and quickly became the centre of a drama at the cafe – and sparked an online debate about the challenges faced by service industry workers.
Complaints and bad online reviews can have dire consequences for stores and restaurants in China, as many consumers fervently follow recommendations on popular social media platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin, China’s version of TikTok.
The threat of a bad review pressures low-wage workers to avoid work.
Anything that could bring negative attention to the company.
Some internet users criticized the barista for his bad attitude, but many others sympathized with him.
“Your salary is so low to begin with, and now you’re facing complaints. If you’re being pressured by both your company and your customers, you should quit,” wrote one online commenter.
But for Lee, who cleans houses as a freelancer for just six hours a day, the experience has been a positive one.
She enjoys developing bonds with her clients and says she feels like each cleaning session is more than just a business transaction.
“Customers carefully pour water for us to drink, when it’s mealtime they order takeaway or bring food to us and always remind us to drink water and rest,” she said.
So far, she says she has no regrets about quitting her office job.
“After a tiring day, I can go home, eat and do the things I love without any extra mental pressure,” she said.
