人浮于事

1. Basic Information

• Pinyin: rén fú yú shì
• English Translation: More hands than work (overstaffing)
• Idiom Composition: 「人」（People or personnel）＋「浮」（To float or to exceed）＋「于」（Than or more than (a comparative particle)）＋「事」（Work, tasks, or affairs）
• Meaning: A situation where there are more people than there is work to do, leading to organizational inefficiency and redundancy.

2. Detailed Meaning and Nuances

「人浮于事」 contains the following nuances:

• Modern Meaning: Overstaffing: In modern usage, it represents an imbalance where 'People > Work'. It is a critical term used to describe how excess staff leads to lower productivity and ambiguous responsibility.
• Classical Meaning: Merit Exceeding Pay: Originally, the phrase meant that a person's ability or virtue exceeded the salary they were given—a positive attribute. However, this meaning is completely obsolete today, and the idiom has shifted to a purely negative connotation.

3. Usage

「人浮于事」 is mainly used in the following contexts:

• Organizational Reform: Used in formal contexts to point out the inefficiency of bureaucracies or large corporations and to argue for the necessity of restructuring or layoffs.
  • Example:「这家国企长期存在人浮于事的问题，急需进行体制改革。」
    （This state-owned enterprise has long suffered from overstaffing, and urgent structural reform is needed.)
• Workplace Environment: Used to describe a workplace where there is no work to do and employees are just idling away their time.
  • Example:「部门里人浮于事，大家每天只是喝茶看报，毫无工作效率。」
    （The department is overstaffed; everyone just drinks tea and reads the paper all day, with zero efficiency.)

Additional Examples:

1. 为了解决机关人浮于事的现象，政府决定精简机构。
   （To solve the problem of redundant personnel in the agency, the government decided to streamline the organization.）
2. 这种人浮于事、互相推诿的作风必须彻底改变。
   （This culture of having too many people and shifting responsibility must be completely changed.）
3. 公司合并后，出现了严重的人浮于事的情况。
   （After the merger, a serious situation of overstaffing emerged.）

4. Cultural Background and Notes

• Semantic Reversal: In the original source, the Book of Rites (礼记), the phrase was 人浮于食 (rén fú yú shí), meaning a person's virtue exceeded their 'food' (pay). By the late imperial era, 'food' was replaced by 'work' (事), and the meaning flipped to criticize having too many people for too few tasks.
• Modern Context: This idiom is frequently used in Chinese news and business to criticize the downsides of the Iron Rice Bowl (铁饭碗) system, where guaranteed lifetime employment in public sectors often led to bloated, inefficient workforces.

5. Similar and Opposite Idioms

• Similar Idioms:
  • 僧多粥少 (sēng duō zhōu shǎo): Literally 'many monks but little porridge'; refers to a shortage of resources relative to the number of people.
  • 十羊九牧 (shí yáng jiǔ mù): Literally 'ten sheep and nine shepherds'; describes a situation with too many managers and not enough workers.
• Opposite Idioms:
  • 人尽其才 (rén jìn qí cái): Everyone makes the full use of their talents.
  • 各得其所 (gè dé qí suǒ): Everyone is in their proper place or role.
  • 应接不暇 (yìng jiē bù xiá): Too busy to attend to all the requests or visitors.link
  • 供不应求 (gōng bù yìng qiú): Supply falls short of demand.link

6. Summary

人浮于事 (rén fú yú shì) is an idiom used to criticize overstaffing and organizational bloat. While it originally had a positive connotation in ancient texts, it is now used exclusively in a negative sense to describe bureaucracies or companies where employees have little to do, often leading to a lack of accountability.