China’s companies cut back on year-end bonuses as profit margins narrow

South China Morning Post · Feb 17, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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As China’s workforce heads into another year-end bonus season ahead of the Lunar New Year, the mood is colder than in previous cycles. Unlike a few years ago, when social media was flooded with posts flaunting outsized payouts, public talk of bonuses has largely faded from view.Long viewed by Chinese employees as a barometer of corporate prospects, industry momentum and even the broader economy, the year-end bonus packages for 2025 have become smaller, rarer and far more unevenly distributed, amid slowing growth, squeezed profit margins and heightened external uncertainty.Many companies have even barred employees from discussing bonus details in public. Such a collective “low-key” approach has itself become a telling footnote to the shifting workplace landscape nationwide, compared with the generous bonuses and lavish gifts showered upon employees during the tech and real estate boom.Data corroborates this shift. According to a 2026 market outlook and salary report released in January by Randstad, a global human consulting firm, 26 per cent of respondents said they would receive no year-end bonuses for 2025, while nearly half the reported payouts topping out at the equivalent of one to two months’ salary.“Beyond a handful of profitable, high-growth AI and internet companies, year-end bonuses are unlikely to be distributed in most other industries, or will be extremely limited,” said Echo Luo, a Guangzhou-based job-hunter.She added that even among companies with growth projections, “only a few business units are planning very limited headcount increases, while the vast majority of departments have frozen hiring”.