Take a Career Break, but Stay in the Game

You got burned out. Your kids needed you. You became a crypto millionaire overnight.

Whatever the reason—congrats. Welcome to your career break, length TBD.

Time off by choice can be wonderful if you can swing it, a chance to recalibrate your priorities and detox from the stress of the working world. It can also be a kind of limbo. How to keep your edge without getting sucked back into corporate overwhelm? How do you know when it’s the right moment to job hunt again? And what comes next, anyway?

“It’s the ‘I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up’ kind of feeling,” says Tami Forman, the executive director of Path Forward, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people re-enter the workforce.

Those on work breaks can flounder, unsure what to do once they’ve stepped off the corporate conveyor belt that for years powered their careers, she says. And hiring managers, flooded with job applicants and their own work, often opt for the easiest choice: picking someone who’s currently doing the same job somewhere else.

Don’t be cavalier about what it will take to get back into the workforce, Ms. Forman advises. Start looking before you’re ready.

Carve out five minutes every morning to send a relevant article to two former colleagues, saying why it made you think of them. Ask that parent on the sidelines of the soccer game, the one with the cool job, if they have time for coffee. Explain that you’re on a break and not looking yet, but you’d love to learn more about their role and experience.

“People will be much more open to talking about what’s going on at their company if they don’t think you’re going to say, ‘Can you put my résumé on someone’s desk?’ ” Ms. Forman says.

Brett Delgado, 37 years old, stays in touch with former co-workers via Instagram comments, Discord video chats and online gaming. He left his job at a professional-services firm in the Los Angeles area last April, moving in with his parents in Lake Havasu City, Ariz.

Working 80 hours a week in L.A. while studying for his CPA exam had left him exhausted and anxious. He decided to take a year off to focus on passing the exam, improving his health and connecting with his parents.

So far he’s lost 60 pounds, passed three of the four exam sections (he takes the final one this month) and thought about where he might want to live next. But he won’t start looking for a job until his CPA certification comes through.

“It’s easy sometimes to become preoccupied with, what’s the future going to look like?” he says. “I’ve been trying really hard to take things day by day.”

Even if you’ve been craving funemployment, it’s normal to have some pangs of, “What have I done?” after handing in a resignation, says Ethan Kross, a professor of psychology and management at the University of Michigan.

“We like to know that we have control of things and that they’re certain,” says Dr. Kross, the author of “Chatter,” a book about the internal messages we give ourselves.

If you’re feeling adrift, talk to yourself as you would a friend, addressing yourself as “you” or by your name as you dispense advice. Think about how you might view the situation in six months or 10 years. Will you wish you obsessed more over the next entry on your résumé, or spent time with family? And set boundaries from the beginning of your career break, rehearsing how you’d react if someone, say, offered you a freelancing assignment.

Kristen Witte, 32, left her job with a healthcare software company last June after her younger daughter was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that affects the lungs. She pulled her older daughter out of daycare, and is thankful for time spent colouring and moulding Play-Doh at her Houston home. Still, when LinkedIn job alerts land in her inbox, or she hears of others in her field receiving lucrative offers, she sometimes has second thoughts.

“Am I missing out? Is this the right time for me not to be working?” she wonders.

Taking on a 10-hour-a-week contracting gig in January has been “freeing,” she says, helping her feel as though she’s keeping one toe in the professional world, while still staying flexible for her girls.

If you’re open to jumping back in for your dream job, set up your LinkedIn profile to do the work for you, says Omar Garriott, who previously worked for the company and co-authored “Linked,” a book about using the social network.

The brief description right below your name should match your ideal job title, even if you haven’t held it yet, he says. For example, you could write, “aspiring product manager,” “future product manager,” or “taking work hiatus—seeking product manager opportunities.” In the longer “About” section, include a list of your skills, especially ones that are being used as key words in the job descriptions that interest you most, so the algorithms can find you.

Recruiters will start coming to you, Mr. Garriott says. They’re used to people saying no, he adds, so it’s fine to open your profile for them to search even if you don’t think you want a new job anytime soon. Just make sure to reply to their messages with a yes or a gracious no, and let them know what opportunities you would consider.

Blake Lawson, of Costa Mesa, Calif., initially turned down a job offer he got from a tech company in December. A few months into a career break prompted by burnout and the desire to try something new, he was intent on learning improv, earning his pilot’s license and laying the groundwork for his own consulting business.

Then the hiring manager came back with a 19% pay bump from the initial offer, plus the opportunity to learn skills that Mr. Lawson was eager to expand. He said yes.

He started the new job, leading a product team, in January, and likes having more structure in his days. But he misses the time and freedom that came with not having a 9 to 5 and says he’s intent on seeing his side hustles through.

“There’s been a little bit of sadness in knowing what I left behind,” he says.

TAIPEI—For years, Beijing hoped to win control of Taiwan by convincing its people their economic futures were inextricably tied to China.

Instead, more Taiwanese businesses are pivoting to the U.S. and other markets, reducing the island democracy’s dependence on China and angering Beijing as it sees its economic leverage over Taiwan ebb.

In one sign of the shift, the U.S. replaced mainland China as the top buyer of Taiwanese agricultural products for the first time last year.

Electronics firms such as chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. are also selling more goods to American and other non-Chinese buyers, thanks in part to Washington’s chip restrictions and Apple’s bets on Taiwanese chips.

Overall, Taiwanese exports to the U.S. in the first 10 months of 2023 were more than 80% higher than in the same period of 2018, Taiwanese government data shows. Taiwanese exports to the mainland were 1% lower—a major change from a decade or so ago when China’s and Taiwan’s economies were rapidly integrating.

Taiwan’s outbound investment has also shifted. After flowing mostly to mainland China in the early 2000s, it has now moved decisively toward other destinations, including Southeast Asia, India and the U.S.

Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn, which assembles iPhones in mainland China, is expanding in India and Vietnam after Apple began pushing its suppliers to diversify.

Chinese state media recently reported that China had opened tax and land-use probes into Foxconn. Though Taiwanese officials and analysts interpreted the probes as a sign that China wants Foxconn founder Terry Gou to drop plans to run in Taiwan’s presidential election in January, some have said Beijing may also be trying to pressure Foxconn into resisting decoupling with China.

“Any attempt to ‘talk down’ the mainland’s economy or to seek ‘decoupling’ is driven by ulterior motives and will be futile,” said a spokeswoman for Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office in September. “The mainland is always the best choice for Taiwanese compatriots and businesses.”

Fully decoupling from mainland China’s economy likely isn’t possible, and would be disastrous for Taiwan, not to mention China, even if it were.

Foxconn and other major Taiwanese companies depend heavily on China for parts, testing and buyers. Some 25% of Taiwan’s electronic-parts imports still come from the mainland.

If China’s weakened economy returns to strong growth, it could shift the calculus back in favor of the mainland, where the Communist Party claims Taiwan despite never having ruled it. About 21% of Taiwan’s total goods trade this year has been with mainland China, versus 14% for the U.S., though the U.S. share has risen from 11% in 2018.

“My hunch is that the large manufacturing sectors will try to stay in the Chinese market, even with harsh conditions,” said Alexander Huang, director of the international affairs department of the opposition Kuomintang Party, whose supporters include business people with mainland ties. “If you talk to those business owners, they say, ‘Nah, no way will I give it to my competitors.’”

Even so, many forces are pushing Taiwan to rewire its economic relationship with China.

Trump-era tariffs and Biden administration export controls have raised the cost of sourcing from China, and in some cases prohibited it. U.S. firms are pushing their Taiwanese suppliers to diversify sourcing, and rising wages in China have made it less attractive than before.

Long-running shifts in Taiwanese sentiment toward China—and China’s own efforts to punish the island using its economic leverage—are also factors. China has banned Taiwanese agricultural products such as pineapple and, in 2022, grouper fish, and restricted outbound tourism to Taiwan.

Those restrictions to some degree have backfired, pushing Taiwanese businesses to look elsewhere.

Casting for new markets

Chang Chia-sheng, who runs a fish farming operation in Taiwan, said his main export target a decade ago was mainland China. But as geopolitical tensions climbed, he looked elsewhere. Sales to Americans have jumped fivefold since 2018, he said. “In the U.S., things just seem to work out more easily,” Chang said.

The U.S. and Taiwan reached an agreement in May on a number of trade and investment measures to deepen ties, though the deal stopped short of reducing tariffs.

In the June quarter of 2023, 63% of revenue at TSMC, which makes most of the world’s most cutting-edge logic chips, came from the U.S., up from 54% in the same period in 2018, according to S&P Global data. Just 12% of TSMC’s revenue now comes from Chinese buyers, down from 22% in the second quarter of 2018.

Taiwan’s government is also encouraging closer economic links with Southeast Asia, South Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Its “New Southbound Policy,” rolled out in 2016, has been the subject of fierce debate in Taiwan, with the Kuomintang Party saying steps to boost relations—like handing out scholarships—aren’t worth the cost.

Exports to “New Southbound” partners have risen, however, to $66 billion in the first nine months of 2023, about 50% higher than the same period in 2016.

“Frankly speaking, we’re responding reactively” to the need for more diverse trading partners, Taiwan’s Economic Minister Wang Mei-hua said. “Taiwan needs to manage the risks on its own, but we also need our allies to join us more in mitigating these risks.”

Together, the U.S. and the six largest Southeast Asian economies accounted for 36% of Taiwanese exports in the third quarter of 2023, according to data from CEIC, surpassing the percentage sent to mainland China and Hong Kong on a quarterly basis for the first time since 2002.

In September, Taiwan sent less than 21% of its exports to the mainland, the lowest percentage since the global financial crisis.

Taiwanese foreign investment into mainland China, steady at around $10 billion a year for most of the early 2010s, plummeted in late 2018 and has since been running at about half that level, according to Taiwanese government data. In 2023 so far, just 13% of Taiwan’s investment went to mainland China; 25% went to other Asian locations, and nearly half went to the U.S.

A survey of Taiwanese businesses conducted last year on behalf of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, found that nearly 60% had moved or were considering moving some production or sourcing out of China—a significantly higher rate than European or American firms.

Jay Yen, chief executive of Yen and Brothers, a Taiwanese frozen-food processing company, said his firm received a government subsidy of around $75,000 to market his products to American consumers. China now only accounts for about 3% of its revenue, he said.

That said, “if you really have to consider the risks of a war between the U.S. and China and its potential impact on Taiwan, you might want to place your bets on a third country—neither China nor the U.S.,” Yen added.

Reversing the tide

After China began to open up its economy in the late 1970s, Taiwanese businesses were among the first investors.

By the 2000s, China seemed to be succeeding in its strategy of integrating the two economies, with more than 28% of Taiwan’s exports going to the mainland in 2010, from less than 4% a decade earlier.

Direct flights between the two sides were normalised for the first time in decades. Mainland tourists were allowed to visit Taiwan on their own.

By 2014, the tide was turning as more Taiwanese grew worried about over dependence on China. Student demonstrators protested against a trade pact, later abandoned, that would have deepened ties with China. President Tsai Ing-wen, who took office in 2016, has pushed to diversify Taiwan’s economy.

China has responded by moving trade issues more into the spotlight.

In April, it opened an investigation into Taiwanese trade restrictions that it says limit exports of more than 2,400 items from the mainland to the island in violation of World Trade Organization rules. In October, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced the probe would be extended until Jan. 12—the day before Taiwan’s coming election.

Taiwan’s government has called the probe politically motivated.

Chinese officials have implied that Beijing could suspend preferential tariff rates for some Taiwanese goods in China under a 2010 deal signed when Kuomintang’s Ma Ying-jeou was president. Beijing has also reacted angrily to Taiwan’s recent trade agreement with the U.S.

For Taiwanese companies, building and operating new factories in places other than China isn’t cheap or easy. Protests have at times disrupted operations at Indian plants operated by Foxconn and Wistron, another Apple supplier. In September, a fire halted production at a Taiwanese facility in Tamil Nadu.

Still, some Taiwanese businesspeople have clearly soured on China.

“The electronics industry has already become a Chinese empire, not a Taiwanese one,” says Leo Chiu, who worked in mainland China in quality control for an electronics manufacturer for 14 years before concluding he couldn’t move up further there and returning to Taiwan in 2019. Many of his old colleagues have left, he said.

“If Xi Jinping steps down, there’s still a chance it could change,” says Chiu. “But I think it’s very hard.”

Take a Career Break, but Stay in the Game

Lay the groundwork for a return to work when you want by networking, setting boundaries and getting recruiters to come to you.

As geopolitical tensions rise, Taiwan is shifting its economy to rely more on the U.S. and other countries but at a cost

Casting for new markets

Reversing the tide