China has added 158 new professions to its list of recognized occupations since 2022, and young people have gradually accepted them as part of their career choice options. According to statistics from the Ministry of Education, the estimated number of university graduates across China for the year 2024 is expected to reach 11.79 million. During this graduation season, there is a large number of new professions from which graduates can choose.
Women receive housekeeping training at the Jinye Vocational Skills Training School in Jinhua City, Zhejiang Province.
New Professions
Song Xiaoli in Tianjin studied medicine for her undergraduate degree, but later failed to pass the graduate school entrance examination. To make things more challenging, an aged member of her family became sick in 2022, making life for her and her mother busy running back and forth between the hospital and home. With her professional knowledge in medicine, she is familiar with the process of seeking medical help in the hospital, but noticed that many people who go to the hospital are often quite confused about where to go to get the help they need. At that moment, Song realized that she could use her medical knowledge and experience to help improve the experience and efficiency of patients and their family members in the hospital. As a result, she now works as a hospital escort accompanying patients throughout the whole process of seeing a doctor.
More often than not, young people choose to try new emerging careers because they feel conventional jobs do not suit their needs.
Liu Sai in Wuhan heard of the profession of life organizer when she was in college. After graduating, she went through a difficult time during which she failed the graduate school entrance examination twice and was laid off from two different jobs. This caused her great emotional stress and confusion. In 2023, she worked as an e-commerce platform operator in a housekeeping service company. After some time, she realized that her real profession interest was being a life organizer rather than an operator.
A life organizer is a new profession that emerged in 2022, and according to China’s list of recognized occupations it is classified as a housekeeping attendant. So far, more than 73,000 people in China have received training as professional life organizers.
According to Liu, despite the fact that there is no clear standard in this industry, the threshold for junior life organizers is low. Their work includes helping people tidy up their house and putting their things in order, while the work of senior life organizers includes reorganizing the home space according to the needs of the customer. For professional companies, the business scope also includes furnishing. At present, Liu is already qualified as a senior life organizer.
Yi in Shanghai designed a board game because she was dissatisfied with a foreign board game. "It's a pasta-themed board game and it was hard for me to accept the game rules for making noodles. I also know how to make a lot of delicious noodles, so I decided to change the rules of the board game,” Yi said as she related her first attempt at designing a board game.
At first Yi’s end goal of redesigning the board game was mainly to enjoy a good time with her friends. It was not until she resigned from her job in 2022 that she considered working full-time as a board game designer with her partner. Now, they are running the first board game design shop in Shanghai.
According to China’s list of recognized occupations, board game designers are classified under the category of professional design service providers, which is another new profession that emerged in 2022. Yi admits that she started designing board games from scratch without any previous background in art. "Others may be afraid because they have zero background in art. However, after I took the first step in designing board games, things turned out completely different.”
Opportunities and Challenges
New professions come with their own challenges. An unsteady income and being misunderstood by people around are the challenges that practitioners of new professions often face. On the other hand, they can set their pace of life and the sense of fulfillment the work gives them helps them see the value of their work and feel that they have more control over their own lives.
According to Yi, each person can set their own work rhythm in board game designing, but the income is relatively unstable. Earnings from designing board games are based on projects, and payment for each project is received only after it is completed. As a result of the high cost of renting in Shanghai, she worries every day that she might not be able to pay the rent of her small shop.
Liu Sai said that the income of a life organizer is based on the length of time you work. As a result, workers take few breaks during their work. The longest time she worked in the past was for 12 hours straight.
“After building trust with customers, some of them tell me the password to their door and ask me to work there independently; others may give me a brief explanation in the morning after I arrive at their home of what they want me to do, and then leave me to complete the work,” said Liu. For door-to-door services, it is difficult to distinguish between workdays and days off, and there may also be customers who call on weekends.
The service industry is customer-centered, and this philosophy makes the work intensity of practitioners closely related to the requirements of the customer. Unlike the traditional service industry, this new profession focuses more on customer segmentation and requires specific services to be provided on a case-by-case basis. Although this is more demanding for practitioners, it brings them more income and a sense of achievement.
According to Liu, after the completion of the first sorting, they will also pay regular return visits to customers to see whether the previous work met the customer’s expectations, and also observe whether customers have developed the habit of organizing and sorting. "I have a female client who contacts me at the beginning of every season to tidy up her wardrobe. The last time I went to her house, I found that the content of each part of her wardrobe, such as dresses and summer pants, were all in the same order we had arranged them before,” said Liu. At this time, Liu realized that this woman had been able to develop good sorting habits and improve her quality of life under Liu’s guidance.
Because of its newness, the profession itself has not yet been widely accepted. Liu said that although her parents supported her in starting a business, they sometimes hope that she can find a stable job and get married as soon as possible. Song also mentioned that when she first started to escort patients around hospitals, her father also hoped that she would find a stable job. Her father went to the hospital with her for more than a week and was relieved only after he made sure her work was safe.
For Yi, one thing about her career as a board game designer that makes her feel really satisfied is that she does not have to set limits for herself. “For example, if something can't be done for a while, I don't have to force myself to finish it within a certain time period. I can put it aside for a while, and wait for an inspiration and a new idea,” said Yi
Yi used to do brand planning in a company. At that time, she felt that whether it was a big plan or a small idea, even if it could become a hot topic in the current period, no one would remember it after some time and she did not feel that she could get much self-improvement from it. Yi believes that an important reason why she finds value in board game designing is that she does it for herself.
Pursuing Something New
Whether it is a new profession such as a hospital escort or life organizer, or a long-standing profession, being able to make enough to support yourself is important. However, a growing number of young job seekers are now paying more attention to whether the job can enhance their self-identity and whether the job content truly creates value. According to a survey conducted by China Youth Daily, 52.6 percent of fresh graduates will consider whether they like the job content when choosing a job. In addition, 66.9 percent of the respondents believe that the new trend of new career choices is related to the importance graduates place on realizing their self-worth.
Song once served a senior citizen who had undergone a major surgery. Since it was inconvenient for the patient to travel to the hospital to do regular check-ups or get medicine, Song delivered a report of the patient's recovery progress to the doctor. Because the patient had seen the doctor before, the doctor already knew the medical background of the patient's condition, and the role of the escort in this was recognized by both the doctor and the patient. Song served the senior citizen since April 2023 and witnessed the whole recovery process. During one follow-up check-up, the doctor said in front of everyone in the room, "I've saved another person." Listening to this statement, Song was very touched because she knew she had played a crucial role in this process.
The emergence of new professions over the last few years has given fresh graduates more options to choose from. After becoming a full-time life organizer, Liu opened her own studio in March 2024. Her reasons for starting up a business are simple: the company she worked for previously could not meet her needs of future personal development; and secondly, she already had the ability to independently handle the whole work process from taking orders and designing to project implementation. Even though she did not have a successful career in the beginning, she had mastered such skills as operating e-commerce, communication, collaboration, and marketing promotion. Even the knowledge about journalism and communication that she learned while preparing for postgraduate entrance exams gave her tools to start her own business, helping promote her studio on social media platforms more professionally and effectively. "The so-called 'detours' actually count," Liu said.
Sometimes, to "keep walking" is the norm. Choosing a beloved profession gives “work” a new connotation. Yi believes that real work is “doing things spontaneously." She recalls that when she resigned from her previous job, she thought that it might be difficult to do board game designing full-time, but she was willing to do it anyway. "It is fun to watch short videos online sitting in a reclined position every day, but after watching you feel unsatisfied. The reason lies in the people themselves. I still want to work and create value,” said Yi. She believes that not pursuing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) does not mean not working, but rather setting clearer goals, continuously accumulating experience, and creating the value that one recognizes.
"I want to do something new, and in the process I create a product while learning and improving my ability. For me, the original board game I completed is a testament to the phased process. My work doesn’t always satisfy my clients, but I'm always improving, and the most satisfying work is always the next project,” said Yi. 
XUE XIANG is a lecturer at the School of Chinese Culture and Communication, Beijing International Studies University; WANG HAOKUN is a research assistant at the school.
