China has hit a record-high youth unemployment rate. A Chinese researcher warned in his recent analysis that the unemployment figure may surge further in the coming three years.
“In general, from now until 2030, it will be the most challenging period for employment since China’s reform and opening up,” writes Wang Mingyuan, a researcher at a Chinese think-tank based in Beijing.
In April, the urban-surveyed unemployment rate of those aged 16–24 was 20.4 percent, nearly four times the national rate of 5.2 percent, according to Fu Linghui, a spokesperson for China’s National Statistics Bureau at a press briefing in May.
This unemployment rate exceeded the former high of 19.9 percent disclosed by Beijing in 2022 during the hardest pandemic lockdowns, when people were strictly kept motionless and businesses were closed.
A Grim Employment Future in China
Several factors show that China likely will experience a very serious unemployment situation, as revealed by Wang Mingyuan’s research report, “How Many Young People Exactly Are Out of Jobs?”The first factor is the difference between the increasing number of graduates and the declining number of recruitments.
The number of graduates in 2023 will be at a record high, reaching 11.58 million, adding to the pressure of employment in China, according to Wang.
Wang writes that the official number of 11.58 million graduates for 2023 only includes university graduates, while 5.64 million graduates from China’s “blue-collar” vocational schools and 600,000 overseas returnees are not counted in the official statistics of graduates. If they are all included, the total number of graduate students will be nearly 17.82 million in 2023.
According to Wang, the difference between the annual increase in employment and the number of fresh graduates from 2020 to 2023 is -2.49 million, -2.20 million, -4.49 million, and -5.82 million, respectively. This means that 15 million graduates have been unable to find jobs during this period.
In addition, due to setbacks encountered by the private economy, digital economy, and service industry, the number of youth who have lost their jobs is estimated to be around 25 million, according to Wang’s analysis.
On top of that, around 14 million migrant young workers lost their jobs and returned to their hometowns in the rural areas during the three years of pandemic lockdowns. Hence, the cumulative number of jobless young people (aged 16–24) is 54 million over the past three years.
Wang believes that the situation will become worse due to the enrollment expansion. He estimates that there will be nearly 20 million new graduates by the year 2030.
True Unemployment Figure Higher Than Official Figure: China Experts
China experts believe that the real unemployment situation is much worse than the official data.“The Chinese Communist Party’s method of urban unemployment survey only counts the jobless with urban hukou and are registered, and those who are not registered are not included. Moreover, rural households are not included in unemployment either, as the CCP regards them as part of the rural labor force. This has led to the unemployment rate remaining between 4 percent and 5 percent in the past, which does not reflect the real unemployment data at all,” China current affairs commentator Cai Shenkun told the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times on April 19.
Cai said that the enrollment expansion is a third factor that masks the true unemployment rate.
Qiu Wanjun, a professor of finance at Northeastern University in Boston, told The Epoch Times that the CCP’s enrollment expansion serves as a delayed solution to the employment problem.
“Students in school are not included in the calculation of the unemployment rate of the working population. Their staying in school reduces the number of unemployment,” He said.
Li Hengqing, a China expert at the Washington Institute for Information and Strategy, told the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times that Chinese universities fake the number of graduates as well, which also reduces the overall unemployment data because they don’t count graduates without the graduation certificates in the official number of graduates.
“Chinese universities don’t issue graduation certificates to students. The high-education authorities tell graduates: ‘We will issue your graduation certificate when you have found a job,’” Li said in an interview with The Epoch Times on June 5.
Wang Guo-chen, a Taiwan economics expert, agrees with Cai that the CCP’s unemployment statistics don’t include the rural working population.
The Taiwanese economist added that there is indeed an omission in the statistics of the unemployment rate in mainland China, as its sample proportion is too low, less than 0.07 percent.
Wang is an assistant research fellow at Taiwan’s Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER). He specializes in China and the world economy, international political economy, and quantitative study.
“[Wang Mingyuan] came to the final figure of 54 million unemployed young people, which is relatively conservative, and that is why his research article was published,” said Wang Guo-chen.
Amid the grim future for the young generations, Chinese leader Xi Jinping encourages Chinese youth “to eat bitterness,” a Chinese expression equal to “enduring hardships.”
