Leon Li used to play a discreet but indispensable part at one of China’s biggest tech giants. As an administrative officer, she worked around the clock to schedule meetings, prepare documents and provide her bosses with whatever support they needed. But in February, she quit the company, forgoing a stable career and comfortable salary forsomething a little less stressful — cleaning homes.
For some college graduates though, taking a manual job was not their first choice. As the economy slows, positions for fresh grads have become harder to come by in an increasingly competitive corporate job market. The survey also found the number of people under the age of 25 who applied for blue-collar jobs in the first quarter of this year surged 165% compared with the same period in 2019. China’s unemployment rate for 16-to-24-year-olds reached a staggering 21.