Mei Yiou has been working as an investment consultant for a securities company in Shanghai since she graduated from university nearly five years ago. Now in her mid-20s, she’s burnt out and ready for a change.

“I don’t want to work at a desk anymore,” she says. “Being an investment consultant means carrying a computer with you everywhere, being on call 24 hours a day, needing to meet sales targets, and constant networking. It’s too much pressure.”

Mei, who refused to give her real name for privacy reasons, began looking for work last July, even attending a job fair. But she has yet to receive a single offer or interview request — and she doesn’t expect to get one anytime soon, either. “It’s very difficult to job hop right now,” she says.

Mei’s not the only one putting off her search. Just a few years ago, changing jobs was routine for white-collar workers in China’s larger cities, especially in industries like finance or tech. In some cases, employees would simply “naked quit,” resigning without another position lined up. That was possible in part because they were confident they could always find another job. But a recent report from recruitment platform Zhaopin found that 18.9% of China’s white-collar workers think finding a job will be “very difficult” this year, up from 12.6% in 2023. The percentage of current white-collar workers who reported actively looking for jobs fell nearly 20 percentage points, to 45.4%.

As the job market shifts under their feet, workers now prize stability. The civil service exam — which promises lifetime employment to successful applicants — has set registration records in recent years. And employees like Mei, who might once have jumped ship first and figured out their cover letters later, are increasingly resigning themselves to staying put, at least for the moment.

Searching for solid ground

Zhang Jianyong, the founder and head of Chengdu-based headhunting service JobWell Consulting in the southwestern Sichuan province, says that a desire for stability is the most notable shared preference among the jobseekers he’s worked with this year.

Previously, applicants with experience often asked to be placed at small start-ups, preferring the potential upside of being a “pillar” in a small firm to the drudgery of life as a “screw” in a large company. But the number of jobseekers willing to bet on small companies has dropped significantly this year, Zhang says, with clients instead asking about jobs with state-owned enterprises or other large firms: “(Applicants) are more interested in going to the biggest companies in their field, the corporate leaders. That much is extremely clear.”

These positions are appealing even when they come with a pay cut. Changing jobs was once a way for employees to increase their compensation: Jump at the right time, and they could as much as double their salary, according to Zhang. But now many of his clients say they’re willing to earn less to switch. The Zhaopin report found that nearly 25% of jobseekers said they expect to earn the same or less than their current job if they jump to a new position.

Too little leverage

One reason for job hoppers’ pessimism is companies’ scaled-back hiring plans: As leverage shifts back to employers, some firms are cutting headcount and demanding more from potential hires.

Zhang says some of his biggest partners slashed headhunting outlays in the first quarter of 2024. One, a tech firm, cut headhunting expenses by about 50%. A new energy investment firm he works with dropped its headhunting spend from tens of millions of yuan a year to nearly zero since late 2023.

According to Zhang, companies now want younger, better-educated, and better-performing hires. And with few companies hiring, firms are able to recruit them without offering raises.

Meanwhile, companies that shed staff aren’t necessarily hiring replacements. Instead of hiring new workers to fill vacant positions after an employee leaves, Mei says companies simply distribute the excess work to other employees. “It’s all about ‘decreasing costs and increasing efficiency,’” she says, using a popular corporate euphemism for expecting employees to do more with less.

Despite her frustrations, Mei is preparing to stay at her current job for the foreseeable future. That’s partly because she worries landing a new position won’t be enough. Her own employer has doubled its requirements for passing probation since 2020. If she jumps ship now, she fears she’ll have to work much harder to stay in her new job.

Moving up to moving out

While workers like Mei try to settle in for the long haul, others are extending their searches — and signaling a willingness to leave the country’s comfortable but highly competitive coastal megacities for relaxed positions in its more affordable interior.

Among them is Liu Zhenzhen. The 25-year-old recently quit her job as a manager at an international logistics company in the southern city of Guangzhou to take a position with a multinational fruit producer in the remote southwestern prefecture of Xishuangbanna, near the China-Myanmar border.

The choice comes with a significant pay cut and will require her to spend significant time in the countryside, but Liu estimates she’ll be able to save as much as 4,000 yuan ($550) a month due to Xishuangbanna’s much lower cost of living.

“It pays half of what I made straight out of college,” Liu says. “But if you compare it to living in Guangzhou, counting what I paid in food and rent, I should be able to clear 3,000 to 4,000 yuan a month.”

Jumping from large coastal cities — which typically offer residents better quality healthcare, welfare, and other services — for cheaper and less competitive areas in China’s interior is an increasingly common choice for young white-collar workers. Zhaopin found that more than 50% of respondents were willing to move to smaller cities for work; the proportion of those willing to relocate was even higher among white-collar workers in the country’s four “first-tier” cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou.

Much of the appeal of smaller cities is centered on public perceptions of them as being a better bargain, with lower costs of living and a more relaxed pace of life. Over 41% of respondents in the Zhaopin survey said they believe small cities are less “involuted” than large cities; 31.7% of respondents said they had more “development potential.”

This reflects something of a generational shift in China, as young workers have an increasingly positive view of smaller, less economically developed regions than their parents. Liu says the decision to relocate came “easily” to her, but that it was difficult to convince her family to accept her choice.

“My family has maybe come around finally,” Liu says. “But they still have a lot of doubts, and I have to constantly explain my choice to them.”

Relocating doesn’t make sense for everyone, however, especially high earners. According to Zhang, the headhunter, most high-paying jobs remain concentrated in China’s biggest cities. His clients typically earn between 400,000 and 500,000 yuan a year; relocating to a smaller city would require taking a massive pay cut.

“There are no such opportunities in second-tier cities,” Zhang says.

(Header image: VCG)