One of China’s top leaders has painted a bleak picture of the job market in the world’s most populous country as widespread Covid-19 lockdowns bring the economy to a halt.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang — No. 2 in the Communist Party of China hierarchy — called the employment situation “complex and serious.”
In a statement last Saturday (7), he instructed all levels of government to prioritize measures to increase jobs and maintain stability.
These measures include helping small businesses survive, supporting the internet economy, providing incentives to motivate small businesses, and providing unemployment benefits to laid-off workers.
“Stabilizing employment is critical to people’s livelihood and is the main support for the economy to function within a reasonable range,” Li said.
His remarks come at a time when the country’s unemployment rate has hit the highest rate in nearly two years, according to government data.
Each year, China needs to add millions of new jobs to keep the economy going. The government has set a goal of creating at least 11 million jobs in cities by 2022.
But Li said in March that he expects the economy to generate more than 13 million this year, citing the need to accommodate recent university graduates and rural migrant workers.
Li, who oversees economic management in China, has made repeated calls to stabilize employment in recent weeks, and his remarks this weekend are a stark reminder of the cost of China’s Covid restrictions.
As the highly transmissible Omicron variant spreads rapidly in China, the country is battling its worst outbreak in more than two years.
So far, at least 31 Chinese cities are under total or partial lockdown, which could affect up to 214 million residents across the country, according to the latest calculation by China. CNN .
More than two years after the pandemic began, President Ji Xinping is stepping up his strict Covid-zero policy, even as the rest of the world tries to learn to live with the virus. The conduct involves mandatory mass testing and strict lockdowns.
Xi said last Thursday that China would punish anyone who questioned those policies.
The lockdowns have brought the world’s second-largest economy “close to the breaking point,” according to a recent report by analysts at Société Générale.
In April, China’s gigantic service sector contracted at the second-fastest pace on record, as Covid-19 lockdowns hit small businesses hard.
Its manufacturing sector also shrank sharply.
The latest government data shows unemployment hit a 21-month high in March, and that was before China extended a lockdown in financial hub Shanghai and imposed tight restrictions on Beijing.
The unemployment rate in 31 major cities reached a record high in March.
The country’s massive tech sector is also facing an unprecedented job crisis.
Once free industry was long the main source of high-paying jobs in China, but major companies are now downsizing on a scale never seen before as the government continues its crackdown on private enterprise.
The country’s top internet regulator said last month that the industry had no such crisis, but the matter is still being widely discussed on Chinese social media.
Other sectors, from real estate to education, have also suffered sharp job losses in recent months.
Beijing is aware of the economic difficulties and particularly concerned about the risk of mass unemployment, which would undermine the legitimacy of the Communist Party.
Early last month, Hu Chunhua, China’s vice premier, called for “total efforts” to stabilize employment.
On April 28, the Communist Party’s Politburo pledged to implement “significant measures” to support the internet economy and suggested easing a year-long crackdown on the tech sector.
Source: CNN Brasil
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