According to official statistics, youth unemployment in China increased slightly to 17.1% in July\u2014the highest percentage this year\u2014as the second-largest economy in the world faced more challenges.<\/p>\n
China is grappling with rising youth unemployment, a highly leveraged real estate industry, and escalating trade disputes with the West.<\/p>\n
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) released its 16\u201324-year-old unemployment rate on Friday, showing a significant increase from 13.2 percent in June.<\/p>\n
In June 2023, the closely monitored metric reached its highest point of 21.3 percent. Subsequently, the authorities changed their methodology to exclude students and suspended the publication of the figures.<\/p>\n
This June, nearly 12 million students graduated from Chinese universities, intensifying competition in a job market already fraught with difficulty and probably accounting for the sharp spike in unemployment in July.<\/p>\n
The latest jobless statistics follow other depressing economic data from Beijing, such as figures indicating sluggish industrial production in spite of recent growth-promoting measures by the government.<\/p>\n