一张自制午餐的照片差点暴露了可可·李的秘密。这位32岁的前中国国有房地产公司员工本打算在家庭群聊里分享这张照片，但及时收住了自己。她担心母亲会问为什么她没去上班。
A photo of a home-cooked lunch almost exposed Coco Li's secret. The 32-year-old, a former employee of a Chinese state-owned property firm, had been about to share it in her family group chat before catching herself. Her mother might ask why she wasn't at work.
李是众多向亲戚隐瞒失业状况的中国人之一，担心在就业日益艰难的劳动力市场中，这常会带来亲人的关注和压力。
Li is one of many unemployed Chinese hiding their joblessness from relatives, wary of the concern and pressure that often follow in a labour market where finding work has become increasingly difficult.
“她会陷入无尽的焦虑循环，最终把这种焦虑传递给我，” 李说，她在超过六个月前辞职，原因是工作量大且缺乏认可。她补充道，母亲的关注“实际上无法解决我的问题”。网络参与度的规模表明，假装有工作的行为很普遍。
"She would fall into an endless cycle of anxiety and eventually pass that anxiety on to me," said Li, who quit more than six months ago, citing high workload and little recognition. Her mother's concern "couldn't really solve my problem," she added. The scale of online engagement suggests pretending to have a job is widespread.
关于如何度过一天、如何躲避亲戚关于工作的提问，以及记录假装上班者经历的帖子，在类似Instagram的RedNote应用上获得了超过7000万次观看，在中国的抖音（TikTok）上获得了6.1亿次观看。在类似X的微博上，相关话题标签的观看次数高达3.2亿次。
Posts advising where to spend the day, how to dodge relatives' questions about work, and chronicling the experiences of pretend-workers have drawn more than 70 million views on the Instagram-like RedNote app and 610 million views on Douyin, China's TikTok. On X-like Weibo, related hashtags have drawn up to 320 million views.
分析人士表示，这一现象鲜明反映了在越来越依赖轰轰烈烈出口的经济中，就业市场的疲弱。正如周一公布的第三季度数据所示，制造商正通过降价和裁员来应对激烈竞争，同时将更重的工作量压在剩余员工身上。
Analysts say the phenomenon is a stark reflection of a weakening job market in an economy increasingly reliant on roaring exports. As Monday's third-quarter data showed, manufacturers are battling fierce competition by slashing prices and payrolls while piling heavier workloads onto remaining staff.
持续的房地产市场危机和地方政府财政紧张也打击了就业和收入，自动化以及人工智能的快速采用同样如此。
A prolonged property market crisis and tight local government finances have also hurt jobs and incomes, along with automation and rapid AI adoption.
康奈尔大学中国政治副教授傅戴娜表示，假装去上班让人们能够保全面子，并可能化解集体不满。
Diana Fu, an associate professor of Chinese politics at Cornell University, says pretending to go to work allows people to save face and potentially defuse collective discontent.
她表示，这有助于维护社会稳定，因为北京正在推进自动化以及与美国的科技竞赛。
This helps preserve social stability as Beijing pushes ahead with automation and its tech race against the US, she said.
“假装上班的工人正在帮助中国政府规避在推进自动化和保障就业安全之间做出艰难抉择的困境，而就业安全对社会契约至关重要，”她说。
"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," she said.
大多数社交媒体帖子分享了如何在家外度过一天的技巧，比如在公园、图书馆、咖啡馆和购物中心漫步，场景让人想起1990年代亚洲金融危机期间，韩国和日本的上班族藏起失业身份的情形。李在父母来访时也遵循类似的作息。
Most social media posts share tips on how to spend the day away from home, drifting through parks, libraries, cafes and shopping malls, in scenes reminiscent of salarymen who hid their joblessness in South Korea and Japan during the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s. Li follows similar routines when her parents visit.
“我从未相信过图书馆会在工作日爆满，”36岁的视觉特效制作人张说，她在八月因人工智能驱动的裁员而失业。她只透露了自己的姓氏。
"I never would have believed the library would be completely full on a weekday," said Zhang, 36, a visual effects producer who lost her job in AI-driven redundancies in August. She gave only her surname.
在其他帖子中，用户们好奇身边的人是否也处于类似困境，或者——呼应李的做法——解释他们为何藏起来以及这种感觉如何。
In other posts, users wonder if the people around them are in a similar predicament, or - echoing Li - explain why they hide and how it makes them feel.
有些帖子是每日日志。在一篇题为《失业第30天：假装上班的一个月》的帖子中，一位用户讲述了自己投递了80份简历却全部石沉大海的经历。
Some posts are daily journals. In one titled "Day 30 of unemployment: a month pretending to work," a user recounts 80 failed job applications.
28岁的孙苏珊自去年底起一直隐瞒自己被互联网公司裁员的事实。五月时，她的母亲和继父从较小的家乡搬到重庆这个特大城市与她同住，以寻找工作，这使得她的应对变得更加复杂。这迫使她必须在早上9点前离开家，并在下午6点后才能返回。
Susan Sun, 28, has concealed her layoff from an internet company since late last year. The balancing act became more complicated in May when her mother and stepfather moved in with her in the megacity of Chongqing from their smaller hometown to look for work. This forces her to leave home before 9 a.m. and return after 6 p.m.
孙苏珊每月靠失业救济金1864元（约合278美元）以及遣散费的剩余部分维持生计。她说她很满足于靠少量收入生活且不工作，她唯一的压力来自父母。
Sun lives on 1,864 yuan ($278) per month in unemployment benefits and what remains of her severance package. She says she is happy living on little and not working. Her only pressure comes from her parents.
“他们通过细微而坚持的表情和语气把焦虑传递给我，”她说，尤其是当他们建议她省钱时，因为“经济不好”。纽约州立大学布法罗分校社会学助理教授董一格表示，与日本和韩国在1990年代的社会安全网相比，中国相对薄弱的社会安全网最终可能使失业者更难以维持这种假象。
"They pass their anxiety on to me, through subtle, insistent expressions and tone of voice," she said, especially when they advise her to save money because "the economy is bad." Yige Dong, an assistant professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo, says China's relatively thin social safety net, compared with those in Japan and South Korea during the 1990s, could eventually make it harder for the unemployed to keep up the pretence.
“到某个时候，”董一格说，“个人可能会更关注于从所有可用来源筹集资源，包括向家庭成员和亲戚借款。”
At some point, "individuals would probably be more concerned with pooling resources from all available sources, including borrowing from family members and relatives," Dong said.