Content creation holds appeal for laid-off workers seeking flexibility

Wang works below the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in San Francisco, Monday, April 8, 2024. Despite a strong job market, there are still thousands of people who have found themselves out of work across industries stretching from tech to retail to media. But rather than trying to find another job in their old role, some workers are turning to online content creation. — AP

With a compact mirror in one hand and an eyelash curler in the other, Grace Xu told her roughly 300,000 TikTok followers 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.