Want to know how America’s Gen Zers are really doing? Hop on board a quick 14-hour flight, and take a look at what’s happening in China. Young adults there are dealing with an extreme version of the same issue plaguing America’s TikTok generation: Finding a well-paying job that meets their expectations. The journey for a stable and well-paying white-collar job has become something of a dull take on a medieval quest, a hiring process that takes months and multiple rounds of interviews only for multiple rejections. A bigger problem than the dystopian job application process, though, is the disconnect between what young people want and what their leaders are willing to give them. The result in China? A youth unemployment crisis of epic proportions, where one in five people between 16 to 24 years old is without work, according to the National Bureau of Statistics via Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal.
A lot of the problem has to do with the grunt work of blue-collar manufacturing. Government officials in both countries are desperately pushing young employees to take on these jobs, only to find themselves in a similar bind; whether it's the stigma surrounding these jobs or the lack of change in salary or working conditions, Gen Z isn't looking at the offer all that keenly. The gripe for government officials, though, is that they depend on workers in these blue-collar roles to keep, you know, things like buildings from falling apart, produce or food on the table, and providing an increasingly consumer driven culture with those shoes, goodies, or whatever TikTok says they need next.
