The
Chinese government, facing an expected seventh consecutive
monthly increase in youth
unemployment, said Tuesday that it had instead
suspended release of the information.
اضافة اعلان
The unemployment rate among 16- to 24-year-olds in
urban areas hit 21.3 percent, a record, in June and has risen every month this year. It was
widely forecast by economists to have climbed further last month.
The decision to scrub a widely watched report could exacerbate
the concerns expressed by investors and executives who say ever-tightening
government control of information is making it harder to do
business in China.
Fu Linghui, a spokesperson for the
National Bureau of Statistics, said at a news briefing that the government would stop making
public employment information “for youth and other age groups.” He said the
surveys that government researchers use to collect the data “need to be further
improved and optimized.”
China’s youth unemployment rate has doubled in the last four
years, a period of economic volatility induced by the “
zero-COVID” measures
imposed by Beijing that left companies wary of hiring, interrupted education
for many students, and made it hard to get the internships that had often led
to
job offers.
The struggle for young people to find work is another sign of
concern about the Chinese economy, the world’s second-largest. It is flagging
seven months after the government abruptly ended the “
zero-COVID” push, plagued
by falling exports and souring consumer confidence, as well as a dangerous
condition known as deflation or chronically lower prices.
China did issue several other economic reports as scheduled
Tuesday. Many were gloomy: July retail sales and growth in industrial
production — a measure of the
output of China’s factories, mines and power
plants — fell short of expectations. Investments in real estate developments
fell 8.5 percent in the first seven months of the year.
Earlier Tuesday, China’s central bank made a series of moves
that pushed key interest rates to new lows. The central bank, the
People’s Bank of China, is expected to lower its benchmark lending rate, which determines the
interest rates for mortgages and corporate loans, next week. The aim is to spur
banks to lend more, although analysts said
China’s economic problems are
deep-rooted and require more than interest rate cuts to spark activity.
The data on youth unemployment is not the first economic report
suspended this year by the Chinese authorities. This spring, the National
Bureau of Statistics halted the public release of monthly readings of consumer
confidence, a series that it launched 33 years ago.
Previous surveys showed that consumer confidence plummeted
during a two-month lockdown in Shanghai,
China’s most populous city, in 2022.
Confidence barely began to recover in the early months of this year, even after
Beijing lifted lockdowns nationwide in early December.
China’s policymakers have introduced measures to try to lift
confidence and boost youth employment, such as offering subsidies to encourage
private-sector companies and state-owned enterprises to hire more, and
pressuring colleges and universities to do more to help graduates get jobs.
But the economy has been slow to respond. Private companies in
China, which contribute 80% of the country’s
urban employment, were hit
especially hard by the lockdowns and mass testing that marked “zero-COVID.”
On top of the damage inflicted on the job market during the
pandemic, the government cracked down on the country’s technology, real estate
and education industries, where educated
young Chinese had flocked for jobs.
The regulatory actions caused hundreds of thousands of layoffs and left
companies and investors more cautious about expanding their businesses. When
businesses are wary, hiring typically suffers.
Young people in China are facing a big gap between labor demand
and supply. According to official data, 11.6 million students were expected to
graduate college or university this year — the most ever and nearly 1 million
more than last year. Future classes are expected to be even larger, while
economic growth had started to slow even
before the pandemic.
Another challenge is the mismatch between the jobs that college
graduates want and the jobs that are available. Industries such as construction
and transportation, which usually draw more interest from migrant workers
without degrees, have picked up. But sectors like technology and education have
been slower to bounce back.
Even becoming an entry-level civil servant working for the
government is harder these days. Last year, a record 2.6 million people applied
to take the national civil service exam to compete for only 37,100 entry-level
positions.
Xi Jinping, the country’s top leader, has called for young
people to go to remote areas to find work — to “eat bitterness,” a Chinese
expression that refers to enduring hardship.
But
China’s educated young people today want jobs with good
working environments in fields such as the internet, education, culture and
entertainment. Those jobs, for the most part, are not located in the
countryside.
“College students do hope to go to big cities,” said Nie Riming,
a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Finance and Law, a research
organization.
Rising youth unemployment could lead to broader problems,
according to a June report from the China Macroeconomy Forum, a think tank at
Renmin University of China.
“If it is not handled properly, it will cause other social
problems beyond the economy, and it could even
ignite the fuse of political problems,” the report said.
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