Archive of content related to the unemployment wave.
At 8:50 AM on November 3, about 7,000 people were at a job fair site looking for work, but there were very few job openings, leaving a large number of people just sitting around to kill time.
A factory in Jiangxi forcibly deducted workers' wages for two consecutive months without any explanation, causing wages to drop to 2,500 yuan and triggering protests.
On October 22, the CSI 300 index closed down 1.84%, falling about 20% from its June high and entering a technical bear market; according to Bloomberg, the STAR 50 and ChiNext indices have both fallen about 40% in the second half of the year, and analysts believe the national team may need to buy more and for longer.
According to a report by Yicai on October 22, from January to September 2026, nationwide urban and rural residents' household electricity consumption was 123.46 billion kilowatt-hours, down 0.3% year-on-year — the first decline for the same period in nearly ten years.
On October 21, a Douban user posted that AI-driven layoffs are becoming increasingly common: apart from "Ningxia News Broadcast," the anchors at Ningxia TV have been replaced by AI; after Lao Gan Ma introduced AI pepper selection, the pepper-sorting positions were cut from more than 600 people to 48; the post also listed large-scale layoffs at multiple overseas tech companies including Coinbase, PayPal, and Meta.
Reuters reported on October 20 that some unemployed people in China leave home on time every day to pretend they are going to work in order to hide their job loss from their families, such as a 28-year-old laid-off internet worker in Chongqing who goes out from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day. Cornell scholar Diana Fu said this behavior buffers collective discontent and helps Beijing delay the choice between automation and employment.
The Wall Street Journal reported that China's flexible employment population is expected to rise to 320 million this year, accounting for more than 40% of urban employment. People from all walks of life, including headhunters and street vendors, say their incomes have fallen and they are switching to cheaper alternatives.
Large numbers of job seekers who cannot find work are gathered on the streets of Guangzhou, rushing about everywhere in search of employment.
IELTS tests are being cancelled at short notice on a large scale in many parts of the country; some candidates are already on their way and have printed their admission tickets, and the reason remains unknown.
Xiaomi's employee count decreased from 56,531 at the end of 2025 to 52,876, a reduction of 3,655 people in half a year; R&D personnel decreased by 500.
On September 29, a garment industry worker posted a video titled "Unemployment Scene in Guangzhou," saying that many people at the day-labor market on Qiaonan Xinjie Street in Guangzhou had been waiting early in the morning for daily-paid work. Some had gone several days without landing a job, and their savings were gradually running out. The poster said a daily wage of 150 yuan was already considered decent, and that earning 300 yuan would mean staying up late into the night.
From January to May 2026, Beijing's total retail sales of consumer goods fell by 2.5% year-on-year.
Simulations and calculations show that, in order to hold to the general budget target, the government's continued intensification of tax collection would make the tax base and corporate profits unable to bear the load, and the moment the red line is burned through falls around October 2028.
According to data cited in the video, in the first five months of 2026, China's land transfer revenue fell by nearly 30% year-on-year, a steeper decline than for the whole of 2025.
A netizen shared a video of two elderly people fighting over cardboard boxes, sparking sighs in the comments section about social involution. Some netizens pointed out that given the involution and food safety issues in China, many people might not even live long enough to reach the age of fighting over cardboard boxes.