China’s National Bureau of Statistics declared in August 2023 that it would temporarily cease disclosing the country’s youth unemployment rate. The official justification stated that “further optimization” of the methodology was required. However, the timing was different. Only a few weeks prior, the percentage of urban Chinese between the ages of 16 and 24 who were unemployed was 21.3%, a record high that had been set in the two months prior. Economists believed the figure for July would have been even worse.
Many observers thought it was more than a coincidence that the data was paused at that precise moment.
Six months later, in early 2024, the percentage had fallen to 14.9%. Students who were still enrolled in school were excluded from the revised methodology. The majority of the statistical improvement can be explained by that change alone, not by improved policy, new jobs, or a recovering economy. Just a different method of counting individuals. It’s still unclear if that exclusion was intended to yield a more aesthetically pleasing outcome or if it represents a true improvement in measurement.
Beyond scholarly interest, the question of what China’s youth unemployment rate actually is is important. With almost 12 million new graduates joining the workforce annually, a nation of 1.4 billion people faces an extremely challenging structural issue. The jobs that young people might anticipate, such as those in technology, finance, and services, have become more difficult to find as hiring has slowed due to regulatory pressure on those sectors. The collapse of the real estate market has severely damaged the construction and manufacturing industries, which employ younger migrant workers. In the years since the pandemic, the discrepancy between what young people learned and what employers actually require has become more apparent rather than less.
According to some economists who research China’s labor market, the true rate may have been between 40 and 50 percent in some areas during peak months when underemployment and part-time employment are taken into account. The numbers in rural areas are consistently lower than those in cities. The headline data does not include either figure.
This has a larger social component that cannot be adequately represented by numbers alone. A growing number of young Chinese workers are choosing to leave a system that they believe is biased against them. A silent protest against the expectation of working twelve-hour days, six days a week, for wages that don’t justify the grind, the “lie flat” movement—choosing not to work, not to consume, and not to compete—has grown in popularity. Some young people have chosen the more literal path of becoming what are sometimes referred to as “professional children,” staying at home and getting stipends from their parents or grandparents. When you consider how many families it truly describes, the phenomenon sounds almost darkly humorous.
In addition, women are subject to a unique set of pressures. Employers are clearly reluctant to hire young women of childbearing age because China’s birth rate is still declining even after the one-child policy was lifted. The same is pushed by social expectations. As a result, fewer opportunities are available to this generation of educated young women than their credentials might indicate.
In response, the Chinese government has taken a cautious and incremental approach, offering financial incentives to businesses that hire young people and making promises to facilitate the transition from college to the workforce. These actions have not been sufficient. The underlying factors—a faltering economy, a damaged real estate market, and a declining population base—do not yield to gentle prodding.
Additionally, the global stakes are not insignificant. Latin American and African nations have developed economic ties based on Chinese trade and investment. A China where youth disillusionment turns into structural weakness, where productivity stagnates due to a generation of underemployed or disengaged workers—a China that ultimately exports its issues abroad.
It is genuinely difficult to determine whether the available data reveals any version of the truth. It appears that no specific number was the most illuminating moment. It was the choice to discontinue publishing one.
