76.4% of young Chinese willing to be digital nomads: report

(ECNS) – Becoming digital nomads is an increasingly popular career trend among young Chinese, with 76.4 percent of the post-00s generation willing to adopt the new lifestyle and not be tied down to any one location or time, according to the latest employment report released Wednesday.

This is a new form of work and lifestyle, said the report, as people work remotely, enabling them to live in second- and third-tier cities while earning wages as high as that in first-tier equivalents.

The report was conducted by the National School of Development in Peking University and Zhaopin, one of China’s leading human resources companies.

The report also reveals that 53.9 percent of Chinese workers are engaged in part-time jobs, with the proportion in the post-00s generation reaching 54.5 percent.

Fifteen percent of the post-00s generation earn extra money from professional skills in fields including education, law, finance, consulting, photography, etc., said the report.

In the future, 40 to 60 percent of full-time positions will be replaced by part-time positions amid the digital era, said Liu Aiyu, professor at the Department of Sociology of Peking University.

Some occupations have seen significant growth since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, said the report, including occupations in digital fields, represented by information technology(IT) and the Internet, as well as emerging occupations that heavily rely on digital technology, such as gig economy, online entertainment, and online consumption.

Among them, the gig economy, such as express delivery and takeaway and online entertainment, have surged at the fastest speed, according to the report.

Emerging digital positions have reduced the threshold for employment, with less than 20 percent of positions in online entertainment and the gig economy requiring junior college degrees or above.

While these changes have increased the income of people with lower educations, there is a lack of career development plans and welfare guarantees, said Li Qiang, executive vice president of Zhaopin.

He suggested that workers should draw up their future career development plans on their gig economy occupations and part-time jobs, rather than pile up cheap income at the cost of time.