Exhausted by the pressure to succeed as a photographer, Litsky Li accepted a better offer: quit work to become one of China’s growing legions of children paid by their families to stay home.

Li, 21, now spends her days grocery shopping for her family in the central city of Luoyang and caring for her grandmother, who has dementia. Her parents pay her a salary of 6,000 yuan ($835) a month, which is considered a solid middle-class wage in her area.

“The reason why I am at home is because I can’t bear the pressure of going to school or work,” said Li, a high school graduate. “I don’t want to compete intensely with my peers. So I choose to ‘lie flat’ completely,” she said, using a popular phrase that refers to eschewing grueling hours and traditional family values in favor of pursuing a simpler life.

“I don’t necessarily need a higher paid job or a better life,” she added.

Li is not alone. And it’s not just dissatisfaction driving the phenomenon of “full-time sons and daughters,” a label which first appeared on popular Chinese social media site Douban late last year.

Most of the tens of thousands of young people identifying as such on social media say they’re retreating home because they simply can’t get work.

The jobless rate for 16 to 24 year olds in urban areas hit 21.3% last month, a record high.

Youth unemployment has joined a number of headwinds — tepid domestic consumption, a retreat by private industry and a struggling property market — in becoming a major headache for China’s leadership as the country’s post-Covid recovery fizzles out.