Holding a small mirror in one hand and an eyelash curler in the other, Grace Xu told her roughly 300,000 TikTok followers that she might be about to be fired.

She told them in a subsequent clip that she was right. But regardless, she plans to pursue a different career: as a content creator.

“I think this decision was made on my behalf,” she told viewers in a video posted earlier this year. “The universe has spoken.”

By all accounts, the U.S. job market remains strong, with employers adding 303,000 workers in March. The unemployment rate has now remained below 4% for 26 consecutive months, the longest such streak since the 1960s.

But that’s of little comfort to the thousands of people who remain unemployed. Hiring is concentrated in a handful of industries, with technology and finance adding only a handful of jobs over the past 12 months.

However, rather than trying to return to traditional employment, people like 26-year-old Xu are carving out a new path for themselves through online content creation, where they can do anything from education to social media videos to brand deals and Make money from advertising. interesting.

“I think most workers now no longer look at their employers with the idea that they will find security — permanent security — in their jobs,” said Sarah Damasco, who studies labor and employment relations and sociology at Pennsylvania State University. “I think it’s less risky to do something like a content creator because the risk is so much greater working with a traditional employer.”

Goldman Sachs research shows that in a $250 billion industry, 4% of global content creators earn more than $100,000 per year. YouTube is considered one of the most profitable platforms for creators, and its YouTube Partner Program has over 3 million channels, which is how creators make money. A spokesperson said the platform has paid out more than $70 billion in the past three years.

Meanwhile, TikTok’s user monetization increased 15%, according to a company spokesperson, and the company faces the threat of a national ban that could cause many creators to lose their source of income.

Brooke Erin Duffy, a communications professor at Cornell University, said many people turn to full-time content creation only after seeing a return on their investment. Or they are forced to do so as a way back into employment.

The pandemic has also reshaped how employees think about work, with many preferring greater control over their schedules and the ability to complete work from home. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 440,000 people applied to start their own businesses in February, an increase of nearly 50% from the 300,000 monthly applications before the outbreak.

This includes content creators, although they may only represent a small portion.

For Xu, the epidemic allowed her to rediscover her hobbies. At the time she started producing content on TikTok as @amazingishgrace. Her vintage lapel trousers – all hand-sewn – became an instant hit and gradually attracted a following. Even when she quit her banking job to enter the tech industry for a better work-life balance, she continued to create content.

When a round of layoffs hit last summer, Xu wondered whether she should pursue content creation full-time, despite her deep fear of ruining the things she loved by turning them into work. Her own layoffs accelerated her timeline.

“You have to have this belief that, like, once your life opens up to something, it’s going to come,” she said, “otherwise you’re going to drive yourself crazy thinking about it.”

Another content creator known as Pot Roast’s Mom on TikTok said she stayed in engineering because she was worried about not having health insurance while paying off student loans. But two years ago, when her eponymous cat, Pot Roast, passed away, she began pursuing content creation full-time.

“Her death was like a revelation, or I guess an eye-opener, that there was nothing I loved in life other than her,” said Pot Roast’s mom, who uses her username to protect her privacy . “When she died, I thought, OK, it’s time to make some changes.”

A community of women in the industry helped her transition from traditional employment to full-time content creation by demystifying brand deal pricing and setting up payment tiers on platforms like Patreon, a subscription service for content creators.

She has amassed 1.2 million followers on TikTok, and most of her income last year came from Patreon (about $30,000), with a small amount coming from brand deals, about $10,000.

The Pot Roast mom recently saw a video in which a woman said she made $200,000 a year making cat content. It was likely a one-off, she said.

“I think if you do something like this, you have to be prepared to fail, be prepared to not make a lot of money,” she said. “You have to be realistic.”

The reality is, Duffy says, that turning content creation into a successful career takes time, energy and resources. Creators must negotiate multi-video brand deals or sponsorships to earn a semblance of steady income, but these can have pay dates that are months long. Some rely on savings from traditional careers to fill the gap while they wait.

“When you rely on a platform, the level of unpredictability is pretty profound,” she said. “Your success depends on algorithms or updated community guidelines or an audience that may or may not like you on any given day.”

After being laid off from her job in brand marketing in February 2023, Cynthia Huang Wang tried her hand at content creation full-time. In January, she posted a message on TikTok about returning to work, updating her resume and attracting the attention of 164,000 TikTok fans.

Wang said she sees the appeal of returning to a steady income as the job market improves. Maternity leave from her corporate job also played a role when she and her husband were thinking about starting a family.

However, there are limits to what she is willing to return, including salary, title, and jobs that interest her.

“It’s just not possible for me to go back to the office every day,” she said. “I’m thinking maybe two days, or three days at most, because I still want to be able to create content. I think going to the office every day really makes a difference.”