Fake it till you make it? Inside China’s ‘pretend to work’ trend as youth face surging unemployment

SHANGHAI/HANGZHOU: Every weekday morning, Xiao Ding, 30, begins her day like most other young working professionals in Beijing.

She gets dressed, gathers her things and then heads out to a public library, where she sets up her laptop and spends the day “working”.

Except she’s unemployed.

“I haven’t told my family that I quit my job,” she said. “Until I find where my future lies, I don’t want to pass on my anxiety to them.”

The routine, according to her, is not about deception but discipline. After nearly eight years in tech marketing, she quit her job in 2023 and has now been unemployed for 22 months.

“I choose to pretend to work for two reasons: One, to keep a regular daily schedule. Two, to give myself the pressure of ‘going to work’,” Xiao shared with CNA. 

But the search has been punishing. Even after sending out more than a thousand resumes, she has only landed four interviews – all of which were unsuccessful.

“I chalk it up to the (current) hiring climate being poor,” Xiao said.

During the lowest point of her job search, she spent entire days in bed doomscrolling on her phone. 

“My whole body hurt from it,” she said. “That was when I really understood what ‘living in a daze’ meant. I felt I had no value to society at all.”

And she isn’t alone.

In China, fresh graduates and young adults unable to find jobs are coping by playing pretend – heading to libraries and cafes to maintain a semblance of a working environment amid harsh realities. 

China’s youth unemployment rate rose to its highest level in 11 months in July. The urban jobless rate for the 16-24 age group, excluding students, rose to 17.8 per cent, as a record number of graduates entered the job market.