According to official statistics, youth unemployment in China increased slightly to 17.1% in July—the highest percentage this year—as the second-largest economy in the world faced more challenges.
China is grappling with a rise in youth unemployment, a highly leveraged real estate industry, and escalating trade disputes with the West.
China’s economic policy chief, Premier Li Qiang, made the request on Friday, according to state news agency Xinhua, for beleaguered businesses to be “heard” and have “their difficulties truly addressed”.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed its 16–24-year-old jobless rate on Friday, and it showed a significant increase from 13.2 percent in June.
In June 2023, the tightly monitored statistic reached its highest point of 21.3 percent. Subsequently, the authorities adjusted their approach to exclude students and suspended the release of the figures.
This June, about 12 million students graduated from Chinese universities, intensifying competition in a labor market already fraught with difficulty and perhaps accounting for the significant spike in unemployment that occurred in July.
President Xi Jinping declared in May that reducing youth unemployment needs to be a “top priority.”
