China’s soaring levels of youth unemployment have heightened fears the world’s second-largest economy is heading for a crippling slowdown. Beijing has come up with a solution: It will stop releasing the numbers.
The National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday said it would stop publishing age group-specific unemployment data this month, after China’s youth unemployment rate — for 16- to 24-year-olds — rose to a record high of 21.3 percent in June. Some experts believe that number is actually much higher.
The announcement came amid a slew of data released Tuesday that fell short of expectations, further evidence that China’s economy is struggling to regain momentum after emerging from three years of “zero covid” isolation — the harsh strictures meant to throttle the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
Halting the publication of youth unemployment data avoids “an embarrassing monthly reminder that hurts the market,” said Andy Chen, a Beijing-based senior analyst at consultancy Trivium China. “But the move could backfire, because it only draws more attention to the problem.”
The lack of youth unemployment data won’t help with consumer confidence, said Dan Wang, chief economist at Hang Seng Bank China. But notably, the National Bureau of Statistics stopped publishing its index of consumer confidence a few months ago, after updating it monthly for more than three decades.
The economic numbers that were released Tuesday reveal that the spike in joblessness among young people is just one among many indicators of China’s economic distress.
Consumption remains sluggish: Official statistics released last week showed consumer prices had fallen by 0.3 percent over the last year after being stagnant for months, raising the specter of deflation.
Meanwhile, the property market, which accounts for as much as 30 percent of China’s gross domestic product, is teetering on the brink of collapse. The country’s largest private real estate developer, Country Garden, has sought to delay payment on a private onshore bond for the first time.
