As China’s youth jobless rate hits consecutive record highs, young jobseekers are being paid by their families to stay home, reports CNN. Thirty-somethings studied and pushed hard to get ahead in their careers, and often do little at home despite relying on family for help with rents and other expenses. The growing trend of ‘full-time’ children sees the country’s youth spend time with parents and do housework in exchange for financial support. One such young person, Litsky Li ‘accepted an offer’ to quit work as a professional photographer to go grocery shopping for her family and care for her grandmother, who has dementia. 

On Chinese social networking service Douban, about 4,000 members of a group called ‘full-time children’s work communication centre’ discuss topics related to their daily ‘working’ lives. The buzzword has spread to other social media platforms. On Xiaohongshu, China’s most popular lifestyle sharing platform among younger people, there are currently more than 40,000 posts under the ‘full-time sons and daughters’ hashtag.

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. “Mentally and psychologically, people in mainland China are still recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Fang Xu, a continuing lecturer at the University of California Berkeley.

George Magnus, a research associate at the China Centre at Oxford University and SOAS University of London, said the trend is not a viable solution to the jobs problem in China. “It may be a short term fix so that they have somewhere to live, jobs to do, and family income as a quid pro quo. But if young people are not in the labour market acquiring skills and looking for better opportunities, they may then become unemployable, either because they have been out of work for too long, or not managed to stay at the sharp end of skills and training acquisition.”

The jobless rate for 16-to-24 year-olds in urban areas hit 21.3% last month, a record high.