CCP puts the kibosh on further monthly updates
China has suddenly, with immediate effect, canceled publishing monthly reporting of its youth unemployment figures after a new forecast showed the seventh consecutive month of unemployment rates among its 16-24 year old age group. The percentage of young people in that age group without jobs has reached a high of 21.3% and it was forecast by experts to have risen even further in June.
The decision to withhold any further figures reports from public scrutiny is being received with disdain from investors, who see ever-tightening central control of the economy by the Chinese government as antithetical to continued confidence in business growth and potential.
Much of this problem can be attributed to China’s sweeping response to the emerging covid outbreak in 2020, wherein it shuttered many universities under lockdown, leading to students with unfinished degree courses and businesses unwilling to grant them internships that often lead to jobs as a result. This is on top of a growing scandal that has seen universities encouraging students to falsify their employment status in order to skew figures for reports.
The decision to cancel youth unemployment figures comes against the backdrop of China already suffering a marked economic downturn, plagued by low investor confidence, deflation, and falling exports. Economic reports the Chinese authorities did publish were equally gloomy, with retail sales and industrial output for July falling short of even optimistic predictions. But an emerging boom in green jobs may prove but a pinprick of light in an otherwise dark landscape.
The report on youth unemployment is not the first report canceled by the CCP this year. The National Bureau of Statistics halted the release of monthly reporting on consumer confidence.
The government has initiated a series of policies to try and boost youth unemployment, including subsidies to private and public sector companies to hire more young people, but the sluggish economy has been slow to respond.
One of the two main problems is; firstly, a big disconnect between market labor demand and supply, with over 11.6 million students due to graduate this year alone onto the marketplace; and secondly, the mismatch between the jobs that students want and the ones that are available, with manual labor jobs such as construction and transportation more ready to hire than technology and education, which are the jobs most sought-after by new graduates.
Having so many young and educated people be long-term unemployed could present other political problems too, memories are still raw over the student protests in 1989 that led to the Tiananmen Square massacre, and all the problems that brought China worldwide. The CCP will be conscious of wanting to avoid any further such problems whilst trying to deal with the worrying rise in the next generation sensing lack of opportunities in their nation.
