China’s youth unemployment is so bad that Gen Z job-seekers are paying $7 a day to pretend to work in an office

Young adults in China are paying between 30 and 50 yuan per day, or around $4.20 to $7, to sit in fake office set-ups across the country run by Pretend To Work Company. They’re hot spots for China’s jobless Gen Z to work on their own start-ups, apply to open roles, or simply sit around in the company of other struggling youth looking for an opportunity. The mock offices often provide computers for use, as well as free snacks, lunch, and drinks. 

These faux working locations are popping up in major cities including Shenzhen, Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan, Chengdu, and Kunming, according to reporting from the BBC. 

With China’s youth unemployment being sky-high at 14.5% for 16 to 24-year-olds, there are plenty of jobless professionals to commiserate with at these “pretend to work” locations. It may seem counterproductive for unemployed people to be spending their money feigning work at an office—but the spaces may be better at stimulating a new opportunity than job-seekers being isolated in their apartments, according to experts. 

“The phenomenon of pretending to work is now very common,” Christian Yao, senior lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Management in New Zealand, told BBC. 

“Due to economic transformation and the mismatch between education and the job market, young people need these places to think about their next steps, or to do odd jobs as a transition…Pretend office companies are one of the transitional solutions.”

China’s Gen Z joblessness crisis: ‘Rat people’ and ‘lying flat’

China’s Gen Z professionals have had a hard time scoring jobs for years—and the pandemic only turbocharged the need for new opportunities. 

In 2023, the situation was so dire that China’s youth unemployment rate was estimated to be as high as 46.5%, according to Peking University’s professor of economics Zhang Dandan. After three months of record-high young joblessness that year, the Chinese government ceased running statistics on the issue altogether. The eye-popping unemployment rate included 16 million young Chinese workers who have taken themselves out of the labor force by “lying flat”—doing the bare minimum to get by, and not chasing high-powered careers. 

China’s government is also stepping in to change worrying youth joblessness rates; in 2011, the Ministry of Education cautioned that any college majors with employment under 60% for two years straight could be scrapped altogether. To ensure their disciplines don’t get shut down, some universities in China asked graduates to falsify their job status to keep the programs running.

“I think the actual state of youth unemployment in China could be worse than the data suggests, as colleges have incentives to inflate the employment rate,” Henry Gao, a law professor at Singapore Management University, told the SCMP in 2023. “There have been reports of colleges offering jobs to their own graduates just to paper over the data.”

While there are indications the unemployment rates are improving, being a jobless professional is so commonplace in China that young people are proudly wearing their unemployment as a badge of honor. 

Instead of “girl bossing,” out-of-work Gen Zers are calling themselves “rat people,” spending their days bed-rotting, scrolling on their phones, napping, and ordering take-out. It’s a social media trend that has swept Weibo, RedNote, and Douyin, as burned-out youth are exhausted by scant opportunities and crushed by hopelessness.

“This trend is more than Gen Z disengaging, it’s a quiet protest by young people responding to burnout, disillusionment and a job market that feels both punishing and uninviting,” Advita Patel, a confidence and career coach, and president of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, told Fortune. “When you’re endlessly applying for jobs and being ghosted or rejected, it can be incredibly damaging to confidence and mental wellbeing.” 

Calling unemployed Gen Zers: Are you spending money for special services, or fake office set-ups, in your quest to land work? We’d love to hear your experience—please reach out at emma.burleigh@fortune.com