Goldman Sachs and Big Tech Giants Are Cashing In While Chinese Workers Get Left Behind — And American Jobs Are Next

BEIJING — China's working families are tightening their belts, and Wall Street's own analysts are sounding the alarm — even as the executives and financial giants they represent continue to pocket the gains. The latest evidence: a stunning collapse in consumer spending during China's biggest online shopping festival, a warning sign that the people doing the work are being squeezed dry while corporations rake in profits from AI and high-tech exports.

Total online sales during the annual "618" shopping event from May 13 to June 18 grew by just 4% from a year earlier — a gut-punch drop from the 15.2% growth recorded during the festival last year, according to retail data firm Syntun. That's not a slowdown. That's a crisis for ordinary households, dressed up in the sanitized language of quarterly reports.

The figures lay bare who is winning and who is losing in today's economy. Retail sales fell 0.6% in May from a year ago, marking the first decline since China emerged from pandemic restrictions in 2022. Working people aren't spending because working people don't have money — it's that simple.

Goldman Sachs analyst Hui Shan put the class divide in stark terms, even if unintentionally blunt about who benefits and who doesn't:

"The divergence between high-tech/AI and property/consumption continues to widen in both industrial production and capital market data."

Translation: the billionaires and tech executives are thriving. Everyone else is falling further behind. Shan went on to note that "top leaders' domestic travel, recent policy communications, and our on-the-ground channel checks all suggest these trends will persist" — meaning those at the top have no intention of reversing course.

Goldman itself lowered its forecast for second-quarter real GDP growth to 4.5% from a year earlier, down from a previous estimate of 4.7%, while keeping its full-year outlook unchanged at 4.7%. The firm adjusts its numbers; workers adjust their lives.

The 618 shopping festival — one of the most closely watched snapshots of consumer demand — showed that even heavy promotional efforts by major retailers like Alibaba's Tmall, JD.com, and ByteDance's Douyin couldn't shake loose meaningful spending. Syntun estimated total sales at 934 billion yuan ($137.86 billion), including same-day "instant" delivery orders and group purchases. But among major e-commerce platforms, sales growth amounted to a mere 0.9% — a number that should embarrass the executives who run these empires.

Perhaps most damning: secondhand electronics platform ATRenew reported that sales of preowned products surged by nearly 80% from a year ago during the 618 shopping period. That's not a lifestyle trend. That's working people who can no longer afford new goods scrambling for cheaper alternatives while tech moguls celebrate record AI revenues.

Last year, state subsidies propped up home appliance sales with a 400% surge — a government lifeline, not organic prosperity. This year, with those subsidies gone, demand collapsed and shifted to home cleaning services. Jacob Cooke, co-founder and CEO of WPIC, tried to put a sunny spin on it, telling CNBC's "The China Connection" on Friday:

"Fashion did well, lifestyle, beauty, and health supplements are also doing really, really well. So people are taking good care of themselves, they're looking good, and they want to go out and experience the world."

But let's be honest about what that glossy picture obscures: it's a narrow slice of consumers with disposable income enjoying themselves while the broader working population cuts back on essentials. Cooke also cheered the surge in demand for AI-related hardware and the growing use of AI tools by online platforms, noting they have "boosted brands' profit margins." Profit margins for whom? Certainly not the workers being displaced to generate them.

And that's where the story hits closest to home for American workers. Goldman's own Shan delivered the chilling bottom line:

"AI-related job displacement could amplify macroeconomic headwinds and delay, if not derail, the recovery in the property market and household consumption."

The executives at Goldman Sachs, Alibaba, JD.com, and ByteDance are not losing sleep over job displacement — they're funding it. The same AI tools being celebrated for "boosting profit margins" are the ones eliminating the good jobs that hold communities together, both in China and here in America. While Wall Street cheers the divergence between high-tech winners and struggling workers, it's ordinary people — without lobbyists, without stock options, without golden parachutes — who pay the price.

The 618 shopping festival didn't just reveal a slowdown in consumer spending. It revealed exactly whose side the powerful are on — and it isn't yours.