Young workers decide to go it alone

She started taking courses on operations consulting in September last year, and resigned from the company in March with 300,000 yuan in her savings account.

To be self-disciplined while working on her own, Lu carefully plans her daily schedule. "I want to manage myself as a company," she said.

Lu currently works three days a week as an independent operations consultant and career planner, earning 15,000 yuan a month on average.

As an operations consultant for two enterprises, she offers advice on producing goods to attract more consumers. She also counsels four individuals on promoting themselves on new media platforms.

Tough prospects

Lin Xiaobai, 36, from Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, majored in business administration at Chengdu University, graduating in 2008. She then worked in human resources for a company in Chengdu, at a trading company in Shanghai, at a property agency and other companies in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, and finally at a bank in Nanchong, Sichuan, before deciding to leave the latter position in 2014.

"A few months after I started working at the bank, I realized it was not the life for me. I wanted to quit this boring and stressful work, even though I was earning a good salary," said Lin, who went through an unhappy divorce during this period.

She tried launching a creative design space selling collectibles in Suzhou in 2014, and also a studio in Sichuan for children to learn to draw, sew, and make handicrafts and clay figures. She also launched a creative talent education program with a partner. All these projects failed, as Lin kept losing money and incurring debts.