Taken at face value, China’s recent 2013 jobs data present a healthy picture of growing employment. The government reported a “record high” 13.1 million new urban jobs were created and, despite slowing GDP, headline unemployment remained relatively low at 4.1 percent. This led government spokesman Li Zhong to assert that the Chinese economy is “more and more capable of creating jobs.”
Unfortunately, however, there are major reasons to doubt this upbeat assessment. Not only is the urban unemployment rate of 4.1 percent highly questionable, having remained suspiciously constant for many years, but there is also growing cause for concern that the Chinese economy will not be able to continue to create employment as it has done in the past.
Indeed it appears there are a number of factors, both home-grown and international, that risk coming together in the next few years to cause significant unemployment in China. Most worrying for China’s leaders is the fact that the blueprint to restructure the country’s economy, unveiled at last year’s Communist Party Third Plenum, may well exacerbate this risk.
Given that rapid employment growth and its effect of lifting wages and increasing living standards underpins the legitimacy of the entire Chinese political and economic model, the consequences could be extremely serious.
Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at China’s Delicate Jobs Challenge | The Diplomat.
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