China's Youth Unemployment Hits Record High; Job Market Weakness is Likely to Persist
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China's Youth Unemployment Hits Record High; Job Market Weakness is Likely to Persist

September 09, 2022 | Report

Insights for What’s Ahead

  • China’s surveyed youth jobless rate climbed to almost 20 percent in July, a record high since tracking began in 2018. 
  • A confluence of factors is contributing to China’s youth unemployment problem. Many are temporary, like the ongoing economic disruption due to pandemic-related control measures, a slow service sector recovery, and regulatory clampdowns. Others are deeper structural factors like jobs-to-skills and career expectation mismatches.
  • Improving the situation will largely depend on a recovery in consumer services and associated increases in hiring. While there are signs suggesting that a recovery in China’s employment levels is underway (y-o-y growth for new job creation improved in July, but year-to-date growth is still down compared with last year), a full recovery in the short-term is unlikely, given current economic conditions and ongoing COVID-19 restrictions. 

China's Youth Unemployment Hits Record High

 

What’s Happening?

  • The unemployment rate for 16–24-year-olds hit a historic high of 19.9 percent in July. This is up 0.3 percentage points from June, 3.7 percentage points from July last year, and 6 percentage points from July 2019. It means that one in five young people in China are now jobless – significantly more than in the pre-COVID-19 era. 
  • Data from Renmin University’s quarterly report on the labor market prospects for college graduates shows that the average number of job vacanci

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AUTHORS

Amy Huang

Former Economist, China Center for Economics and Business
The Conference Board

AnkeSchrader

Former Research Director, Asia
The Conference Board


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