前中国国务院总理朱鎔基日前去世 [1]。其在任期间推行的国企改革虽获得肯定，但改革的另一面是数千万工人失业 [1]。这批下岗者多为1945年至1960年间出生，他们经历过大饥荒、文革失学，原本期待在工厂获得稳定的生活，却在改革浪潮中失去工作 [1]。
从1990年代中期开始，朱鎔基推行"抓大放小"的国企改革政策 [1]。下岗工人获得的补偿标准微薄——按工龄计算，每年仅发几十元至几百元人民币 [1]。许多家庭的全部积蓄才几千元 [1]。下岗潮冲击的正是这些工人人生的中年危机阶段：他们上要赡养父母，下要供养子女读书 [1]。这些曾经的产业工人成为中国从计划经济向市场经济过渡的牺牲品，"下岗"这个官方用语，实际上就是失业 [1]。
Former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji has passed away, and while his state-owned enterprise reforms are credited with significant economic achievements, they came at a steep social cost [1]. The restructuring displaced millions of workers born between 1945 and 1960 who found themselves jobless during China's transition from a planned economy to a market system [1].
The "grasp the large, release the small" reform initiative began in the mid-1990s, targeting the consolidation of major state enterprises while divesting smaller ones [1]. Workers laid off during this period received minimal compensation—typically ranging from dozens to hundreds of yuan per year of service [1]. For many families, these severance packages were negligible compared to their total savings, which often amounted to only a few thousand yuan [1]. Most of these workers had entered factories as young people with expectations of stable, lifelong employment, only to face sudden unemployment in their middle age [1].
The layoffs struck workers at a particularly vulnerable point in their lives. Many found themselves caught between the need to support aging parents and the responsibility to fund their children's education [1]. What the Chinese government euphemistically termed a "layoff" was, in essence, unemployment [1]. These workers, who had already endured the Great Famine and missed formal education during the Cultural Revolution, became the unwilling sacrifices of China's economic transformation [1].