Beijing [China], July 27 : In a latest trend, the Chinese youth have started quitting work to become one of China’s growing legions of children paid by their families to stay home, CNN reported.
Twenty-one-year-old Li is now spending her days taking care of her grandma, who has dementia, and grocery shopping for her family in the capital city of Luoyang. Her parents pay her a monthly salary of 6,000 yuan (USD 835), which is considered as a respectable middle-class wage in her community.
“The reason why I am at home is because I can’t bear the pressure of going to school or work,” said Li, a high school graduate, adding, “I don’t want to compete intensely with my peers. So I choose to ‘lie flat’ completely.” she said.
“I don’t necessarily need a higher paid job or a better life,” she added.
Li is not alone. Furthermore, the concept of "full-time sons and daughters," a label that initially cropped up on the popular Chinese social networking platform Douban late last year, isn't solely motivated by frustration, as per CNN.
The vast majority of the tens of thousands of young people who identify as such on social media claim they are returning to their homes because they are unable to find employment.
In metropolitan regions, the unemployment rate for people aged 16 to 24 reached a record-high 21.3 per cent last month.
As the nation's post-Covid recovery fizzles out, youth unemployment has joined a number of headwinds, including lacklustre domestic consumption, a retreat by private enterprise, and a faltering real estate market.
And the issue might be considerably worse than what the data from the government indicates.
Other social media sites now use the buzzword. The hashtag "full-time sons and daughters" is presently used in more than 40,000 posts on Xiaohongshu, China's most popular lifestyle website among younger people, according to CNN.
They describe themselves as different from "ken lao zu," which roughly translates as "the generation that eats the old," a former phenomena that was common among people born in the 1980s. They are mainly in their 20s.
Those 30-somethings learned hard and worked hard to advance in their careers, but while relying on family for assistance with rent and other costs, they frequently do little at home. Today's "professional" kids, on the other hand, help out around the house and spend time with their parents in exchange for money.
Sociologists say China’s traumatic experiences with strict pandemic measures have contributed to the number of young people radically rethinking their life goals and the parents supporting them, CNN reported.
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