"Unemployment is rising, fertility is falling? If the data is not published, the problem will not happen..."The National Bureau of Statistics announced that it will suspend the release of the national youth urban survey unemployment rate from now on, but it has only been announced that the youth unemployment rate rose in June this year, especially among the 16-24 year olds, reaching a new record of 21.3%. Therefore, this sudden announcement that the unemployment rate survey would no longer be made public immediately set off a discussion in the Chinese online community, ridiculing that "the unemployment rate has exceeded the scope of the statistical bureau's ability to modify." At the same time, the National Bureau of Statistics also released fertility data, which has fallen to 1.09 in 2022 and continued to bottom, triggering critical discussions on the phenomenon of unemployment + non-birth in the community.
Nbs
The National Bureau of Statistics only released the national economic data for the first half of the year in July 2023, in addition to the overall economic performance lower than expected in the released report, the unemployment rate surveyed for the labor force aged 16 to 24 in June also hit a new high of 21.3% (20.8% in May), calculated month by month since December 2022, but also from 16.7% showing a monthly upward trend, deteriorating youth unemployment rate, more than 10 million graduating college students, Faced with the dilemma of graduation and unemployment, it became a topic of public concern for a while.
However, just after the release of the data in July, the National Bureau of Statistics announced that it would suspend the release of the national survey of the unemployment rate of young people in cities and towns from now on.
According to Fu Linghui, a spokesman for the Statistics Bureau, the reason for the suspension of the release is that "the economy and society are constantly developing and changing, statistical work needs to be continuously improved, and labor force survey statistics also need to be further improved." The supplementary explanation mentioned that the age group of "16 to 24 years old" defined by the original survey needs to be readjusted, "For example, in recent years, the number of school students among young people in mainland cities and towns has been expanding. In 2022, there will be more than 96 million urban youth aged 16-24 in mainland China, including more than 65 million school students. The main task of school students is to study, and whether students looking for jobs before graduation should be included in the labor force survey statistics has different views in various aspects of society and needs further research. For example, as the education level of mainland residents rises and the number of young people studying in school increases, the definition of the age range of young people needs further research in the labor force survey statistics."
Job fairs
However, the summary statement of the Statistics Bureau seems to only indicate that the age range must be adjusted, and does not fully explain why it is no longer published, and why it is not published directly after adjusting the subparagraph. Previously, Caixin published an analysis written by Peking University professor Zhang Dandan (associate professor of economics at Peking University Development Institute), arguing that youth unemployment may be higher than actually announced.
The article, titled "The Youth Unemployment Rate that May Be Underestimated," is based on data from the Statistics Bureau in March 2023 and calculates that there are about 96 million urban 16 to 24 year olds in China, of which about 32 million are working and another 64 million are classified as non-working.
The so-called non-working population can be subdivided into those who are still in school (48 million people), and the rest are non-school students who are not working outside the home, who may be seen as so-called old people or people who lie flat at home - about 16 million people. If the 16 million people are also counted as nearly unemployed, the actual youth unemployment rate is even higher than the official figures, which were 19.7% in March, compared with 46.5% according to Peking University professors' calculations.
Job fairs
Because of the confusion about the data reported by the state, this time after the Bureau of Statistics announced that it would no longer publish the survey data, it immediately set off a wave of discussion and ridicule in the Chinese online community. Weibo appeared "Youth Urban Survey Unemployment Rate will be suspended to release keyword search, some Weibo netizens interpreted:
"To put it bluntly, the current data is very ugly, so don't look at it first."
"How did you do in the exam?" , "Not bad, most of them answered correctly", "How many points did you score?" , "Don't tell you."
"Shut your mouth and blindfold your eyes, and you will solve the problem." Flexible employment, slow employment, self-employment, one hour of work, is not unemployed. ”
"Storms, storms, waves and waves, close the windows, and declare that there is no ocean in the world."
Ironically, the DSEC also announced that most of the graduates have already confirmed their employment destinations: "From the information learned by the education department, most of the graduates have already confirmed their employment destinations, and the employment status of university graduates is generally stable, and the implementation rate and the number of implementation have increased slightly compared with the same period last year."
However, the supporting data provided by this statement is that colleges and universities in various places have held 198,000 offline campus recruitment activities, and various regions and departments have actively provided targeted guidance services for graduates, and the employment assistance for college graduates has been increasing, and there is no detailed explanation of how to achieve the employment direction of graduates.
Network self-employment
This statement also causes public opinion to have a gap in the perception of reality, in fact, are all graduates really finding employment? How are these so-called "jobs" defined? In related discussions, some people mentioned the problem of some universities and colleges in the past few years - some schools require fresh graduates to submit employment certificates in order to obtain graduation certificates, and some will directly sign agreements with the enterprises that the school cooperates with to directly provide employment certificates, so that the school's graduate employment rate data is better. The "employment" referred to here also has a vague definition, for example, "creating self-media" can also be regarded as a kind of flexible employment, if you extrapolate, this so-called employment destination, should need more real data testing.