By Vision Times TV
Once seen as a symbol of China’s quick ascent from fishing village to global metropolis, Shenzhen is now facing what many residents describe as a “full-blown economic breakdown.” Viral videos and firsthand accounts circulating online depict plummeting wages, shuttered factories, collapsing small businesses, and a widening gap between income and the once-booming city’s unforgiving cost of living. To put things in perspective, a salary of 2,000 yuan amounts to less than USD$300 per month.
“People ask me what Shenzhen has the most of,” one resident tearfully says in a widely-shared video. “Even at 2,000, 3,000, or 4,000 yuan a month, Shenzhen has the most scammers, the most unfinished buildings, and the most jobless people with no skills or assets. What does Shenzhen have the least of? Weekends off, employers paying social insurance and housing funds, and people with high salaries. In Shenzhen, whatever you earn, you spend it all here, don’t even think about taking a single yuan home.”
Shuttering factories
The video documents a factory shutting down just ahead of the Lunar New Year: “Another factory couldn’t hold on and closed right before the holidays. This standalone compound, three floors of workshops totaling 6,600 square meters, plus a four-floor dormitory of 2,200 square meters, is done. This isn’t just about going home early for the New Year anymore. Many small bosses and small companies are simply choosing to shut down before the year ends.”
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Residents say closures have become routine as foreign capital and multinational firms pull out, dealing heavy blows to manufacturing and services alike. Shopping centers, street-front stores, and long-established workshops are disappearing one after another.
Footage from busy commercial districts shows newly opened shops failing within weeks: “They open and then collapse. You see one after another fold with congratulatory flower stands not even removed yet, and it’s already closed. The location is perfect, right in a bustling area, but it still doesn’t last.”
Failing businesses
Another entrepreneur in a viral video warns: “Remember this, don’t start a business just for the sake of starting one. People disappear overnight. Brick-and-mortar is brutally hard. This bread shop across from Xinya Asia-Pacific Plaza couldn’t survive the high rent, even at a prime corner in the city center.”
For workers, the options are narrowing fast. “Shenzhen is really, really hard now. You might not even believe it if I told you,” says the blogger. “Food delivery drivers want to switch to parcel delivery; parcel couriers want to drive ride-hailing; ride-hailing drivers want to do designated driving—and those drivers already want to go back to food delivery. Forget about finding a job with weekends off; finding any job is hard.”
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Middle-aged professionals say the fall is especially steep. “Imagine a middle-aged man losing his job in Shenzhen, how tragic that is. A Shenzhen university graduate who spent over a decade in a big tech firm, earning 40,000 a month, but with mortgage payments of 40,000–50,000. Life barely held together, then layoffs came. Got N+1 compensation, but at over 40 years old, you won’t find another job.”
Women face exploitation to stay employed
A 30-year-old woman described a job market she says borders on coercion: “How bad is it for a 30-year-old woman to find a job in Shenzhen? If I don’t pay to work, I don’t have a job.”
She said a rare offer came with demands she felt unable to refuse: “Before onboarding, they asked me to check whether I was pregnant. Normally people would run immediately, but I really needed the job, so I agreed.” But after joining, she was told every employee had to buy rice monthly through the company’s mini-program. “20 yuan per jin,” (about 1.1 pounds) the supervisor said.
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Despite the inflated price, she said she had no choice but to buy it each month. What finally broke her was the workload: “You work all day, then after hours you still work. Meetings at 7 p.m., then work until midnight. The team lead says you don’t need to stay up, but also says all tasks must be finished before 8 a.m. the next day.”
Team members either worked through the night or woke at 6 a.m. to submit reports by 8. They were also required to write daily and weekly reports: 1,000 words of ‘deep self-criticism’ per person, every day.
“A company with only 20 people still set up a ‘president’s office’ and organized staff to serve the boss,” she said. Though she eventually resigned, she was turned away in every subsequent interview after being asked why she quit her previous job.
Salaries not keeping up
Residents say the city’s cost structure no longer makes sense: “I know rents are expensive, but I didn’t know they were expensive with zero value. I pay 4,000 yuan a month in Futian. Many people here earn only 4,000 a month, my rent alone eats the entire salary. Don’t come to Shenzhen on impulse. It’s a beautiful city, but one with extremely high spending and consumption.”
Even street vendors say survival is slipping away: “Why is it so expensive to run a street stall in Shenzhen? Our fixed monthly costs are already 10,000 yuan, food costs not included. Daily expenses are at least 300. But today’s revenue was only 500 yuan. After costs, it’s like we worked for nothing.”
After four months, they said: “We spent 50,000 yuan just to set up stalls in Shenzhen and earned less than 40,000 total.” Officially, Shenzhen’s minimum monthly wage rose to 2,520 yuan as of March 1, 2025, with a minimum hourly rate of 23.7 yuan. In practice, net income varies widely by industry, overtime, and deductions for social insurance and housing funds. Many factory workers say only heavy overtime pushes take-home pay into the 4,000–6,000 yuan range.
Mass exodus
Netizens returning to northwestern hometowns report an unusually early wave of migration, with many opting not to return due to the dwindling work opportunities in Shenzhen. One wrote that counties once quiet until late in the lunar calendar were already crowded with young people hauling suitcases, starting in late 2025, not year’s end.
Transportation data backs this up. In Shenzhen, the year-on-year inflection point for cross-province passenger volume reportedly arrived about four weeks earlier than usual in October 2025.
When asked why they returned, former co-workers said:
- “No orders at the factory mean early holidays.”
- “The factory’s about to shut down.”
- “Construction sites stopped.”
A veteran construction worker summed it up as: “In past years we could work until winter. This year, after Mid-Autumn Festival there was barely any real work, just odd jobs here and there. All told, I worked five or six months, and a chunk of my wages is still owed.”
For families living paycheck to paycheck, he said, “getting paid in full and making it home safely” has become the only glimmer of hope nowadays. He returned home two months early due to a lack of work.
