Many Chinese office workers are sleep deprived.

That’s according to a recent survey that said over 80% of the country’s white-collar workers suffered from sleeping problems, mostly because of their hectic workload. According to the Thursday domestic media report about the survey, which was conducted by recruitment platform 51Job and didn’t specify the number of respondents, a large number of workers slept less than eight hours each night, the recommended amount of sleep for adults.

More than 57% of the respondents said that they were still on their smartphones well after midnight, mostly dealing with work-related chats and fearing possible messages from their bosses. Half of those in the survey, published earlier this month, said they weren’t satisfied with their quality of sleep and had difficulties falling asleep.

Despite long work hours being deemed illegal, overtime culture is still pervasive in many Chinese companies. Earlier this month, the topic sparked discussions again after comments made by a senior executive from a state-run automobile company on working weekends went viral.

A separate survey released by 51Job in 2022 said that over 90% of the unspecified number of respondents claimed they worked overtime. Of them, 60% had to work an extra hour on average every day, violating the standards stipulated by the country’s labor law.

“I was unable to recover from work pressure,” one user who quit their job at a media company wrote on lifestyle site Xiaohongshu. “My quality of sleep is getting so much better after getting a good night’s rest. I feel almost reborn.”

According to the new survey, nearly 90% of the respondents said they tried various techniques to sleep better. They included doing exercise, taking a bath, reading, and taking additional melatonin, the hormone that regulates sleep.

Editor: Bibek Bhandari.

(Header image: VCG)