Remember the 2020 'fake commute'? In a December 2020 report, Business Insider called it the ultimate work-from-home (WFH) self-care hack. Overworked employees were deliberately faking their commute to save their sanity — a long walk in the morning, a slow drive, a park stroll to clock out mentally. Also read: How losing a job impacts one's mental health
That version is out. The 2026 version is completely different. According to an October 20 report by Reuters, unemployed young professionals in China are now doing a fake commute every day — not to protect their mental health or work-life balance, but to hide the fact that they have no job at all.
China's jobless fake routines to keep families calm
They reportedly leave at 9 am and come home at 6 pm, like clockwork. Only they’re not going to an office. They’re going to libraries, malls, parks, and coffee shops. Packed lunch in hand. Laptop open. Pretending to answer calls and emails so their family doesn't worry.
Coco Li, 32, who quit her job at a state-owned property developer six months ago because of brutal hours and zero recognition, told Reuters about her mom: “She would fall into an endless cycle of anxiety and eventually passes that anxiety on to me.”
{{/usCountry}}Coco Li, 32, who quit her job at a state-owned property developer six months ago because of brutal hours and zero recognition, told Reuters about her mom: “She would fall into an endless cycle of anxiety and eventually passes that anxiety on to me.”
{{/usCountry}}Saving face while navigating unemployment
Susan Sun, 28, reportedly lost her job last year. She’s living on just 1,864 yuan — about $278 — a month in benefits and severance. But since May, when her parents moved in with her in Chongqing to look for work, she has to leave the house every morning to escape their 'subtle, insistent expressions' of panic.
She can't afford to not pretend; and this isn't niche. It's reportedly everywhere on Chinese social media. People are sharing full survival guides for the unemployed: from where to sit for eight hours without spending money to how to answer 'how's work?' questions from relatives. Per Reuters, such posts have 70+ million views on Xiaohongshu (RedNote), 610 million views on Douyin, and 320 million views on Weibo.
Strains from weak hiring, property woes, AI
Reuters pointed to factories slashing jobs to stay competitive, the property sector in freefall, broke local governments, and AI quietly replacing white-collar workers. A 36-year-old visual effects producer, Zhang, laid off in August after his company restructured for AI, told Reuters: "I never would have believed the library would be completely full on a weekday."
Sociologists said they've seen this before — Japanese and South Korean 'salarymen' hid in parks during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis too. But China hits different. Diana Fu, associate professor of Chinese politics at Cornell, told Reuters: "Pretend-workers are helping the Chinese government to stave off the hard choice between leaping ahead in automation and protecting job security, which is so essential to the social contract."
Translation: By suffering quietly and saving face, they keep the system from having to confront itself. But experts said the clock is ticking. Yige Dong, a sociology professor at the University at Buffalo, warned that, unlike Japan and Korea in the 90s, China lacks a robust safety net to catch these workers. Eventually, the money runs out. You have to move back home. You have to ask to borrow. The commute ends.