China’s ‘full-time’ children

[Music] 26-year-old Karen soon lives at home with her parents she cleans shops and cooks for them while it is not unusual for adults in China to live at home with their parents and take up household tasks this is Karen's full-time job her parents are her bosses Karen is among the nation's growing number of so-called full-time children the description may sound like a joke but around 4,000 young people have joined a forum for full-time children on the Chinese social media platform Doan where they post updates about their daily work and there are more joining their ranks so why are young people in China choosing to be full-time children meet arohan she is from inner Mongolia and spent almost an entire year as a full-time daughter she graduated in 2021 from hoot nationality college with a bachelor's degree in mathematics education while in her final year of studies she started looking for jobs but Aran says she was hesitant about taking any of the job offers [Music] for in 2021 Beijing banned for-profit tutoring for school subjects such as maths and English Beijing official said the aim was to free students from having to take excessive classes and to even the plan field for students whose families couldn't afford the tutoring assistant professor Luc from the National University of Singapore said the private tutoring sector was just the tip of the iceberg in China's overall Crackdown on private Enterprises the last two year we saw the falling down uh of uh uh the educational the education industry we saw the falling down of the online game industry so the uncertainty actually is that really big problem from the policy side the phenomenon of the full-time children is nothing but unemployment that is a very simple and a direct answer as hundreds of tutoring centers closed or continued operating clandestinely the number of tutoring jobs available for China's fresh graduates was significantly reduced Karen soon completed both her bachelor's and master's degrees in Australia in 2021 and tried Landing a job at a top Company to pay back her parents investment in her education she asked us for anonymity because she's preparing to take an exam to enter the Civil Service and doesn't want to jeopardize her chances soon says the only offers she received were for sales roles that paid a basic monthly salary of around 3,000 un she was also concerned about having to work long hours for little pay and with constant reviews of her performance but education researcher Chen jwen said the term full-time children is simply a buzzword an alternative to the decades old term Ken Lau the Chinese phrase generally refers to young people who give up working and just live off of their parents [Music] there are also worries that full-time children are adversely affecting China's postco economic recovery so you have a Snowball Effect uh today uh you have some we say that fresh graduate they could not find the job and they choose to stay at home but these people finally uh still needs to go to the job market and find some jobs so it will affect uh the job hunting uh for the next year for the next next year fresh [Music] graduates [Music] [Music] but competition is expected to be stiff as many young people are rejecting offers in the private sector to prepare for China service exams first is the Civil economic situation second is the traditional opinion of the iron rice for and third is a conservative social political climate I think that's the reason why we have seen so many people that taking the C7 SE China has been expanding its recruitment of national level civil servants for the last 6 years to fulfill the growing demands for civil service jobs a record high 2.83 million people appli to take the civil service exam or goul cow in September 2023 but with 39,000 vacancies Nationwide only 1.4% of exam takers successfully got jobs in the Civil Service Chen said says the rat race for civil service jobs is a natural market choice but the fierce competition should not be used as an excuse to stay at home China had a record high 11.6 million fresh University graduates in 2023 Chinese cities created more Grassroots jobs exclusively for fresh graduates in the 2024 recruitment plan as announced in October 2023 but this just added to Karen's decision not to take a job in the private sector had she done so the government would not have considered her to be a fresh graduate she wanted to hedge her bets China's youth unemployment rate hit a record high in June 2023 when about 21% of young Chinese aged 16 to 24 were jobless Beijing abruptly stopped posting the data in June 2023 nearly 6 months later publishing of those figures resumed showing that China's youth unemployment rate dropped down to 14.9% in January 2024 Professor Lou worries the situation won't change for the foreseeable future they staying at home and do not go going out to work so it will result in the decline in the total social consumption and later it will in turn limits the social capacity to to create new jobs to create more employment so finally that cycle is negative uh and more than that this kind of uh negative cycle will result in a lower burst rate and marage rate so in the long run if you look C the uh social demand in the L wrong is still not a good sign both arhon and Karen regard being a full-time child as just a career phase arohan resigned from her job working for her parents in August 2022 to take up a district level government job with a 2-year contract she said the job May improve her chances for future civil service exams Karen is anxiously waiting for her Gua written exam result and preparing for a potential in-person job interview but it won't be easy she's competing with thousands of full-time children just like [Music] her

Channel: South China Morning Post

Views: 251,709

Keywords: China economy, China youth unemployment, China's full-time children, SCMP, SCMP explains, South China Morning Post, finding jobs in China, full time children, full time children in China, lie flat, youth unemployment China

Id: XxHTk5hM-DY

Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 17 2024