World’s Second Poorest Economy Emerges: China’s Leading Companies Cut 50% Jobs as Survival Collapses

Why is this happening? Right now I don't even have 10 yuan in my pocket. Today I put on my most proper and decent clothes. I just want to find a job where I can find food and a place to stay. Why is it so hard? Why can't nothing go smoothly? Now even relatives and friends are staying far away from me. Making money is really too hard. Don't expect anyone to feel sorry for you. I've decided. Tomorrow I'm not going to work. I'm going to beg. I feel like this society is really pushing people to the brink of insanity. We've already reached a point where there is no way out. The good days are over. No hope for life anymore. So what are your plans for the future? No plans. The ultimate tragedy of awareness is not ignorance, but knowing and being unable to act. Lately, I've had this feeling of being half alive. I don't feel any energy. I'm exhausted every day. In 2026, China's unemployment wave and layoff wave are spreading across all social levels. Job pressure has expanded from blue-collar workers to white-collar workers. In 2026, major internet companies in China carried out large-scale layoffs. Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, Meituan, and Baidu have all reportedly made varying levels of adjustments. Roles such as front-end development, testing, data analysis, and operations were affected. In some business lines like travel, content, and e-commerce support, the reduction rate reached about 30 to 50 percent. Baidu's latest round of layoffs has already reached my family. I'm now in Tangshan, and I'm preparing to accompany my father to the hospital for treatment in the next couple of days. My husband is in Beijing. I just got through to him on the phone. So have you received the notice? Yeah, I received it. My three-year contract has just expired. The severance they're offering is fairly reasonable. That's good. Do you feel any better now? I feel about the same as adults. We can all understand it. Yes, I think. Don't overthink it. Take this time to rest properly. After joining Meituan in my 11th year, a sudden change disrupted my originally stable rhythm. The company proposed that my position be transferred to someone else. In that moment, panic and helplessness completely overwhelmed me. In the internet industry, the 35-year ceiling is something you can't avoid. I was laid off by Baidu. Being laid off at 35, unmarried and without children, when you put all that together, it's enough to make anyone shake. This round cut a lot of people again. I work in channel management in Douyin Life Services. This life services division was supposed to be one of the biggest hiring departments this year. Now I've left, and I honestly don't know what to do anymore. I'm 26 years old, and I've been laid off by ByteDance. Now I can only process my registration. I've been at ByteDance for six years, mainly working in content operations. Honestly, when people hear ByteDance, they look at you with admiration. They think the pay is high, the work is easy, and even if it's not ideal, it still looks good on a resume for future jobs. Since I'm already laid off, I'll just say what I really feel. When I first graduated from university and joined the company, my salary was about 55,000 yuan. That was in a second-tier city, so it was pretty good. But high income also means high pressure. Competition in big companies is extremely intense. Overnight, overtime, work was normal. I graduated from a 985 university with both my bachelor's and master's degree. I started a business. It failed. Then I went to a big tech company. Got laid off again. Then I got divorced. Okay, I was also laid off because of AI. And because of AI, I don't even have the courage to look for work anymore. Why do I say that? At Baidu, I worked in paid consulting. Basically, if you didn't know something, you could come to our platform and ask any question. Later, the company launched a new product called Wenxin EN. And then, we were all told across departments to go all in AI. At that moment, everyone in our department just sucked in a cold breath. We all thought, it's over. The company's main product could completely replace our entire business. Inside the company, we were already being deprioritized. And externally, think about it. Users can just ask AI for free. Why would they pay to come to our platform and ask human experts? And those so-called experts might even just go ask AI first, then pass the answers back to users. In the end, exactly as we all expected, our department was dissolved. No surprises at all. Everyone was just waiting for that day to come. Layoffs in Chinese internet industry are now mostly revealed through employee postings on social media. They are often hidden layoffs done through performance pressure, job transfers, or negotiated exits with standard severance plus one month compensation rather than official mass announcements. The spread of AI tools is accelerating this process. Repetitive coding, data aggregation, and basic consulting work are being automated. Companies are pursuing efficiency at all costs. On June 14, a Hangzhou AI consultant and vlogger posted a late night video. I met several former colleagues over the weekend. People from Alibaba, ByteDance, and Kuaishou. Layoffs are already happening everywhere. This is basically inevitable. It's only a matter of time. The first group being cut is programmers. Front-end and back-end distinctions are basically gone. Now it's all full-stack developers. Those who can't adapt are being pushed out. The second group is outsourced staff. They used to handle repetitive, low-level execution work. Now all of that is being replaced by AI. The third wave currently being cut is business intelligence and data analysis roles. People who used to build reports and tables. Now even that middle layer of development is mostly unnecessary. AI can automatically pull data from large business systems, summarize it, and present key metrics in the dimensions managers want. So all of these jobs are at high risk. You need to adapt quickly. Two months ago, after I was first shocked by the power of AI coding, I made a prediction. Alibaba, with 200,000 employees, could cut 100,000 of them. So prepare early. Don't have any illusions. Below the video, some users also said that while driving part-time at night, they often picked up programmers from companies like Alibaba, NetEase, Dahua, and ByteDance. They chatted during the rides, saying they were now using tools like Codex and Cloud Code, spending their days trying to figure out how to get more tokens, and then they were all laid off. In early June 2026, a leak circulating on social media sparked wide discussion. The post claimed that the travel business line under Alibaba had begun large-scale layoffs, with testing and front-end roles cut up by up to 50%, back-end roles by 30%, and product roles reduced by about 15%. Later, a self-claimed developer from the Alibaba Xixi campus posted at midnight on June 11, saying they had just received standard severance plus one month's compensation, returned their laptop immediately, and that 50% of the department had already completed exit procedures. In the comment section, other self-identified employees confirmed the situation, adding that some departments were being hit especially hard. Alibaba layoffs are a reflection of the entire internet industry. Over the past decade, internet companies grew rapidly through scale expansion and continuous capital inflow. But today, they are shrinking just as fast under profit pressure and technological upgrades. After being laid off, I'm no longer the so-called manager N people used to call me. I used to be a prestigious university 985 master's graduate, a senior software engineer. I once believed I would spend my whole career peacefully in this company. From little N when I first joined, to being called manager N, and now back to anonymous N. My monthly take-home salary was about 28,000 yuan. This year is my fourth year working in artificial intelligence. Endless overtime, endless take-out meals. Sometimes I don't even have time to finish one meal before the next one is gone. Today is my 1481st day in this company. If I remember correctly, I was actually very happy today. I went excitedly into my boss's office and handed over my latest research report and a major breakthrough. I never expected that my boss would suddenly tell me to hand over all my projects to my apprentice, and also transfer my team management duties to him. My salary was reduced to below 3,000 yuan. At that moment, my mind went completely blank. Is this the so-called 35-year-old wall? Is this the point I can't cross? I'm only 35, my child is just over one year old, and now I'm facing no income at all. A first-tier city means fixed monthly mortgage, car loans, utilities, daily expenses, and baby formula costs. Right now, I truly understand what it means when people say adult life is not easy. The pressure is overwhelming every single day. It's raining outside, and I still don't dare go home. I don't even dare tell my family this news. This is not just one programmer's emotional outburst on short video platforms. Stories like this repeatedly appear on platforms such as MaiMai, XiaoHongShu, and DouYan. The harsh reality of layoffs in the internet industry is that it is hitting people who were once considered part of the middle class. When companies turn cost reduction and efficiency improvement from a slogan into action, and when AI begins to truly replace standardized, repetitive, rule-based work, those middle-aged workers carrying mortgages, car loans, and children become the first to be pushed off the stage. Industry insiders have already warned that the layoff wave in big tech is not a one-time shock. It is entering an uncontrollable cycle. The second half of 2026 is likely to bring even more frequent waves of layoffs. The IT industry has really changed, brothers. Are you afraid of being laid off in 2026? I have a feeling a large wave of people will lose their jobs this year, and for some, it may even become permanent unemployment. Why do I say this? Because the impact of AI is extremely widespread. Around me, many older programmers in their 30s or 34 or 36 are being laid off or called in for performance talks. These are big tech employees earning 700,000 to over 1 million yuan a year. But from the company's perspective, their cost efficiency is too low. For big companies, it's all about cost. So if you think AI only affects junior programmers, that's not true. It also affects senior engineers. Senior developers are not safe either. Now, finding a job is extremely difficult. Even more worrying is that some people leaving big tech can't even get interview opportunities. Their resumes get no response at all. At that point, you can basically consider yourself out of the IT industry. Many industry insiders are already warning that the wave of layoffs at major internet companies is not a one-off growing pain, but rather the beginning of an out-of-control cycle. This will only happen more frequently in the second half of 2026. According to disclosures from Chinese media outlet NetEase on June 15th, over the past 18 months, the five major Chinese internet companies collectively laid off more than 130,000 employees. Alibaba reportedly shrank from 194,000 employees to 128,000, a reduction of about 66,000 people or 34%. Baidu dropped from 45,500 to 35,900. JD.com is also planning to cut about 12,000 positions. What is unsettling is that this round of layoffs is fundamentally different from before. In the past, companies laid people off because they were barely surviving. Now, they're laying people off even while profits are still growing. More concerning is that this wave of internet layoffs appear to be backed by policy direction. According to a report by Duchess Whaley on June 11th, Beijing's AI Plus action plan aims for 70% AI penetration in key industries by 2027 and up to 90% by 2030. Analysts warn this transition will involve a difficult adjustment period. The report notes that some AI agent tools are already being marketed with the promise of replacing entire departments. For example, Alibaba's multi-agent enterprise platform Wukong offers preset one-person company capabilities designed to automate e-commerce sales, live streaming, and software development tasks. A report from CT Bank estimates that about 9.6% of jobs in China, roughly 70 million positions, are at high risk of being replaced by AI. For workers in their 20s, that risk rises to 13.6%. On Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, the topic AI anxiety has already received over 7.8 million views, with users debating whether AI could replace human labor the way 19th century mechanized looms replaced manual textile workers in Europe. A woman named Liu from a large internet company in Hangzhou said, She works in content operations and added, Senior analyst Shu Jinghe works at consulting firm Plenum. She said China's major tech companies are still in a phase of all-in investment in artificial intelligence. She noted, But large companies are expected to remain cautious about direct layoffs. China's employment market in 2026 is undergoing an unprecedented shock. The economy continues to slow, supply chains are moving offshore, and both real estate and manufacturing are in decline, leading to a sharp contraction in job opportunities. At the same time, tens of millions of university graduates are entering the labor market, intensifying competition. The internet industry, once a major reservoir for highly educated young workers and a symbol of stable middle-class employment, is now at the center of this wave of layoffs. Rapid advances in AI are replacing a large amount of repetitive standardized coding and testing work, leaving many young workers facing unemployment soon after entering the workforce. When the expansion of artificial intelligence does not bring a sense of security to society, but instead keeps eroding employment space, it pushes ordinary people's anxiety to a new level. A deeper problem is that structural flaws in the system in China make the employment crisis even worse. Official data often paints an overly optimistic picture, while real unemployment is obscured. The social security system is incomplete, and flexible workers lack basic protections such as social insurance and housing provident funds. A large number of young people can only struggle to survive in the gig economy, ride-hauling food delivery and carrier services, but these jobs are essentially dead-end jobs. So-called flexible employment is, in reality, just unemployment under another label. The employment crisis has become a prelude to a collapse in social confidence. When a society cannot provide upward mobility for its young people, the so-called demographic dividend quickly turns into a social burden. Employment difficulties do not only mean falling income and shrinking consumption, they also mean blocked social mobility and worsening class rigidity. Ultimately, the combination of unemployment pressure and structural problems may lead to deeper social dissatisfaction and systemic instability. On June 14th, a user on X named Xie Wanjun wrote, ordinary people trying to earn a living honestly is extremely difficult. He said that due to the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party and Xi Jinping, the livelihoods of ordinary people have been cut off, and only the downfall of the party and Xi would allow people to find a way forward. you