This article looks like a goldmine, but I don't have time to read it all and won't be interested in doing that once I have the time. Here's my favorite paragraph of the part I read:
Today the party’s propaganda machine is spinning stories about young people making a decent living by delivering meals, recycling garbage, setting up food stalls, and fishing and farming. It’s a form of official gaslighting, trying to deflect accountability from the government for its economy-crushing policies like cracking down on the private sector, imposing unnecessarily harsh Covid restrictions and isolating China’s trading partners.
The way society is structured currently manual labour might be marginally less alienating, but it will destroy your body, and you'll have to do it for another 2 decades after it does just to survive.
Skilled trades seems like a nice midway point, but just like "learn to code", "learn a trade" feels less like practical career advice, and more a long term labour cost saving measure.
the billions stolen in wage theft are going to develop new types of steam loom for deskilling labor