Team News Riveting
China is reportedly understating the official unemployment figure.
China’s unemployment rate may be more than triple the official figure, according to Yao Yang, dean of Peking University’s National School of Development.
The national unemployment rate was as high as 20 per cent, underlining that about 100 million people in the country were jobless, Yao said in an interview with Sina Finance, in response to data from the country’s census authorities the previous day that showed unemployment unchanged at 6 per cent.
China’s economy had seen a significant downturn due to the year-long COVID-19 pandemic, with many small and medium-sized enterprises, especially those in the service industry, forced to shut down, he said.
In an online survey carried out in June, Yao and his team found that 15 per cent of the 6,000 respondents were out of a job and that another 5 per cent were on the brink of losing theirs.
