Out-of-work accountants and baristas might want to brush up on their Mandarin.
Hot on the heels of news that America has zero job growth, two corporations have announced they are bringing jobs back to the middle class — in China.
Yesterday, accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers trumpeted plans to expand massively in Asia by hiring 15,000 people in China and Hong Kong over the next five years.
In fact, the firm said it will bring thousands of jobs to Chinese college graduates in the next few months, according to Dow Jones.
Starbucks, meanwhile, announced its own blistering expansion, vowing to more than triple the number of its mermaid- themed coffee shops in China by 2015. It’s aiming to get up to 1,500 locations in four years.
While these companies look forward to new growth, prospects for the middle class here in the United States seem grim, with last week’s unemployment report showing the economy added no new jobs in August. Adding to that short-term pessimism, new estimates from the United Nations population division predict that by 2030, the U.S. will have a middle class one-quarter the size of China’s.
Still, that doesn’t mean everything is gravy in China. According to Helen Wang, consultant and author of “The Chinese Dream,” even with companies bringing new jobs, China’s middle ranks are as worried about the future as we are.
“They have extreme anxiety because they don’t know how long this window of opportunity will be open,” she told The Daily. “They worry when the optimism will be gone, and if they don’t make enough money, the government won’t take care of them like before. So they grab what they can grab.”
Hot on the heels of news that America has zero job growth, two corporations have announced they are bringing jobs back to the middle class — in China.
Yesterday, accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers trumpeted plans to expand massively in Asia by hiring 15,000 people in China and Hong Kong over the next five years.
In fact, the firm said it will bring thousands of jobs to Chinese college graduates in the next few months, according to Dow Jones.
Starbucks, meanwhile, announced its own blistering expansion, vowing to more than triple the number of its mermaid- themed coffee shops in China by 2015. It’s aiming to get up to 1,500 locations in four years.
While these companies look forward to new growth, prospects for the middle class here in the United States seem grim, with last week’s unemployment report showing the economy added no new jobs in August. Adding to that short-term pessimism, new estimates from the United Nations population division predict that by 2030, the U.S. will have a middle class one-quarter the size of China’s.
Still, that doesn’t mean everything is gravy in China. According to Helen Wang, consultant and author of “The Chinese Dream,” even with companies bringing new jobs, China’s middle ranks are as worried about the future as we are.
“They have extreme anxiety because they don’t know how long this window of opportunity will be open,” she told The Daily. “They worry when the optimism will be gone, and if they don’t make enough money, the government won’t take care of them like before. So they grab what they can grab.”
