Harry Guo built a life that defined success in China. Born in 1971, he came of age in the 1990s, when China deepened its economic reforms. He taught himself computing and found his way into jobs in multinational firms and then Chinese internet giants. By his mid-40s, he was comfortably middle class. He and his wife paid off two mortgages early and sent their daughter to high school and college in Canada.
Then Mr. Guo was laid off. Now 55, he has not had a job in more than two years. It’s not for lack of trying. The supermarket near his Beijing apartment won’t hire cashiers over 50. The warehouse where he inquired about work turned him away. An acquaintance who runs a small business told him, with some embarrassment, that his age made him unemployable.
For decades, people like Mr. Guo — I call them the reform generation — felt they had struck a straightforward bargain with the system: Work hard, don’t criticize the government, and life will steadily improve.
During the boom years, when China’s economy was growing in double digits, career opportunities were abundant as Chinese and multinational companies competed for talent. A job hop could mean a 30 percent raise. They were the first in their families to go to college, own apartments and rise through corporate ranks. They sent their children to tutors and schools abroad.
The Chinese dream, much like the American one, was the expectation that those who worked hard could have a better life than their parents’ and that their children’s would be better than their own.
Now that dream is unraveling. There is little room for upward mobility and a strong downward pull. The housing market has contracted sharply. Private investment has slowed. Multinational companies shuttered or scaled back their operations. Layoffs have spread through technology, media, education and property-related industries since the pandemic, even though China’s official urban unemployment rate has hovered around 5 percent for years.
Across China’s cities, midcareer professionals who rode the reform-era boom are discovering that the labor market has little use for them. They are too old for an economy that prizes youth, too expensive for firms under pressure and too financially committed — mortgages, tuition, aging parents — to stop working.
Mr. Guo invoked a popular social media meme: “At 40 you’re dead professionally. You’re simply waiting to be buried.” At 55, he feels he has already been interred.
When Mr. Guo lost his job in October 2023, he registered his unemployment status with an official administrative office in his neighborhood and was added to a WeChat group labeled “40/50,” a bureaucratic designation for unemployed women over 40 and men over 50. In his residential compound of roughly 1,000 households, the group has grown from four members to 86 in just over a year.
Age discrimination is so normalized that it has its own name: the Curse of 35, a widely held belief that white-collar workers become liabilities rather than assets once they cross that age threshold. Although Chinese law contains general prohibitions against employment discrimination, it does not clearly define or strongly enforce protections against age bias. A recent WeChat post from a recruitment company in Chongqing was typical: a customer service role capped at 30, a bank call center at 35, a semiconductor plant at 30, a warehouse sorting job at 45.
Chinese tech firms skew notably young. According to 2021 data from the job platform Maimai, the average employee age at ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, was 27; at Alibaba and Huawei it was 31. In large U.S. tech firms, the average employee age, according to one analysis, is 37.
For many, however, the indignity of ageism is only part of the problem. What is more disorienting is that the ladder of mobility they climbed has been pulled from under their feet.
One man, who asked to be identified only by his last name, Ma, spent more than two decades as a reporter and editor at a state broadcast station. He had moved to Shanghai from Inner Mongolia in 2003, part of a wave of provincial talent drawn to opportunities in bigger cities. During their peak earning years, he and his wife, who still works there, brought home roughly $70,000 a year combined. They had two daughters, bought cars and traded up to a bigger apartment.
Then, around 2018, advertising revenue began to dry up. Mr. Ma’s work increased even as pay declined. In 2022, he was diagnosed with a blood disorder requiring a bone-marrow transplant and time off. He returned to work early, against his doctor’s advice, because he had heard that the broadcaster was restructuring and he feared losing his job.
He lost it anyway. On Dec. 31, 2024, he recorded his final broadcast. He now receives about $280 a month in unemployment benefits. He buys discounted vegetables and meat. He has applied for audio editing and journalism roles. No one has called back. He is 47.
“The moment you’re past a certain age, you become invisible,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or what you know.”
When I asked him about his future, he said he’d rather not think about it.
In a second-tier city in northern China, a 39-year-old network infrastructure salesman had a career that followed the same arc. He asked to be identified only by his nickname, Benchi, which is the Chinese name for Mercedes. He left his village for college, joined a major internet company, got married and bought an apartment in 2019, when real estate prices were at their peak.
Benchi was laid off in 2023. After an eight-month search, he found a position paying roughly half his previous salary.
The apartment he purchased has lost at least a quarter of its value and is difficult to sell. His wife, a full-time homemaker, wants to have a second child. He doesn’t see how they can afford another child, and thinks they should cut back on expenses, even cancel their daughter’s dance class.
“I used to think next year will be better,” Benchi said. “Now I think about how to make sure what I have doesn’t collapse.”
Harry Guo has made peace with his situation. “This has nothing to do with me,” he said. “It’s like the Cultural Revolution or the ’90s mass layoff of the state-owned enterprises. It’s a historical cycle. It just happens to be our turn.”
He now believes in making the greatest effort while preparing for the worst. “When the Titanic is sinking,” he said, “all you can do is try to go down with some dignity.”
Li Yuan writes The New New World column, which focuses on China’s growing influence on the world by examining its businesses, politics and society.
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