Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Online workforce multiplies
Content creation holds appeal for laid-off workers seeking flexibility from their new jobs
With a compact mirror in one hand and an eyelash curler in the other, Grace Xu told her roughly 300,000 TikTok followers that she was likely about to be laid off.
She was right, she tells them in a subsequent clip. But she was planning to pursue a different career anyway: as a content creator.
“I guess the decision has been made on my behalf,” she tells viewers in the video posted this year. “The universe has spoken.”
By all accounts, the U.S. job market is holding strong, with employers adding 303,000 workers to their payrolls in March. The jobless rate has remained below 4% for 26 straight months, the longest such streak since the 1960s.
But that’s of no comfort to the thousands of people who have nonetheless found themselves out of work. Hiring has largely been concentrated to a few industries, while tech and finance have only added a small number of jobs in the past 12 months.
Rather than trying to return to traditional employment, however, people like 26-yearold Xu are carving a new path for themselves through online content creation, where they can make money from brand deals and advertising by producing social media videos ranging from educational to entertaining.
In an estimated $250 billion industry, 4% of global content creators pull in more than $100,000 annually, according to Goldman Sachs Research. YouTube — considered by creators to be one of the more lucrative platforms — has more than 3 million channels in its YouTube Partner Program, which is how creators earn money. A spokesperson said the platform paid out more than $70 billion in the past three years.
Meanwhile, TikTok — which faces the threat of a national ban that could cost many creators an income stream — has seen a 15% growth in user monetization, according to a company spokesperson.
For Xu, the pandemic allowed her to rediscover her hobbies. She started making content at that time as @amazingishgrace on TikTok. Her thrift flips — all sewn by hand — went viral and steadily built up a following. Even when she left her banking job to move into the tech sector for a better work-life balance, she kept on making content.
When a round of layoffs happened last summer, Xu wondered whether she should go to content creation full time, despite a fear of ruining things she loved by turning them into work. Her layoff sped up her timeline.
Cynthia Huang Wang tried her hand at full-time content creation after she was laid off from her brand marketing job in February 2023. In January, she posted a TikTok about returning to the workforce, taking her 164,000 TikTok followers along as she updated her resume.
With the job market improving, Wang said she sees the appeal of returning to a stable income. Maternity leave at a corporate job also has pull as she and her husband consider starting a family.
There are limitations, though, to what she’s willing to return for, including pay, title and work she’s interested in doing.
“Going back to the office every day would be a nonstarter for me,” she said. “I think maybe like two, or max three, days because I still want to be able to create content. And I think going into the office every single day would really impact that.”