"Nobody Wants Me": The Reality of 1.5 Million Won Monthly Salaries for Chinese Youth

As evening approaches, delivery workers begin to gather one by one.

Those in yellow represent Meituan, while those in orange represent JD.com.

Although they belong to different companies, most of them are young Chinese people with youthful faces.

Delivery workers from each company wait in front of areas densely packed with restaurants, picking up orders as they come in to make their deliveries.

They work approximately 11 hours a day.

[Delivery Worker: (Do you start at 8 a.m. and finish at 7:30 p.m.?) There are set working hours. There are many delivery drivers, but orders are scarce, so it is not easy. Everything is more difficult because of the social environment.]

If they work without any days off, they earn about 1.5 million won per month in Korean currency.

[Delivery Worker: I make about 40 deliveries a day. (How much do you earn per delivery?) It is about 1,100 to 1,200 won.]

China's economic growth rate for the second quarter stands at 4.3%, the lowest since the pandemic.

As high-quality jobs diminish due to sluggish domestic demand, young people are flocking to short-term, gig-economy jobs.

[Delivery Worker: (Why did you come to Beijing?) Because I can earn money. Beijing is the place where you can earn the most money in the north.]

The unemployment rate for youth aged 16 to 24 in urban areas of China is 15.6%.

This figure excludes students, and many analysts believe the actual perceived unemployment rate is even higher when considering the so-called Tangping generation, who choose to lie flat and do nothing, or those who have given up on finding employment, known as Bailan.

[Job Seeker: (During my school days) I asked many questions and thought I would be able to find a job after graduation. I never imagined I would have to send out so many resumes. Nobody wants me.]

China has announced plans to create more than 12 million new urban jobs this year and has launched campaigns to expand hiring, such as increasing vocational training in the AI sector.

However, with a gap between the skills possessed by university graduates and those required by companies, along with the automation of certain tasks due to the introduction of AI, resolving the employment bottleneck remains a difficult challenge.

12 Million Graduates Flooding the Market: "I Never Thought It Would Be Like This," Says Despairing Youth (July 19, 2026, 8 O'Clock News)

Reported by Choi Go-woon | Written by Lee Se-young | Video by Choi Deok-hyun | Video Editing by Kim Ho-jin | Produced by SBS Digital News
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.