[Salon] Job trends in China



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In Depth: Cost-cutting freezes over-35s out of China's job market

In March, Xu Yang lost her job after a decade working at the Beijing office of a U.S.-based multinational company. The software firm, caught in the fallout from rising trade tensions and U.S.-China frictions, slashed its China operations — laying off about 70% of its local workforce, including nearly the entire marketing department where Xu worked.

Though she had braced herself for the news, Xu was stunned when her whole team was dismissed. The deeper anxiety set in some weeks later. “It felt like being discarded,” she said. “And I began to question my own worth.”

At 46, Xu joined the ranks of China’s more than 200 million flexible workers, a group that accounted for over a quarter of the country’s employed population in 2023, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.




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