They used to work for China’s biggest companies, but now they’re doing manual labour

HONG KONG — Ms Leon Li used to play a discreet but indispensable part at one of China’s biggest tech giants.

Ms Li, 27, is part of a growing base of Chinese workers swopping high-pressure office jobs for flexible blue-collar work.But these firms are slowly losing their appeal as China’s economy faces headwinds including a property crisis, declining foreign investment and slumping consumption. Ms Leon Li lives in Wuhan, where she recently gave up her job at a major tech company to join the cleaning industry. PHOTO: COURTESY OF LEON LIMs Li is not the only white-collar worker who has found a better work-life balance by trading an office job for manual labour.

The trend to move from professional to manual jobs comes amid surging demand for blue-collar workers, according to Chinese recruitment platform Zhaopin.Exhausted from too much work? Half of workers in S'pore feel the same The explosion of online shopping has seen the average monthly salary for a delivery worker surge 45.3 per cent since 2019, from 5,581 yuan to 8,109 yuan, according to the survey.As the economy slows, positions for fresh grads have become harder to come by in an increasingly competitive corporate job market.

Economists Larry Hu and Zhang Yuxiao from Macquarie wrote in a research report in 2023 that China’s services sector, private companies and small and medium-sized enterprises used to be the major sources of employment for young workers. However, they have been hit hard by sluggish consumer demand. Wuhan is a major commercial city and the capital of the central Chinese province of Hubei. PHOTO: COURTESY OF LEON LIBut some wonder if blue-collar work is truly the stress-free refuge people like Ms Li and Ms Wang imagine it to be.

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