China has created fewer jobs than were lost in the past five years, which has pushed the unemployment rate over the 10 million mark, says a leading China research expert.
Not since the Communist Party came into power in 1949 had so many people been jobless.
Hu Angang, director of Qinghua University's China research centre in Beijing, said on Wednesday that 46 million - or one-third of existing jobs - had been axed in the past five years, according to a China News Service report.
While government and other state-owned work units axed 28 per cent of staff in the past five years, collectively owned enterprises had let go more than half of their workers.
In contrast, only 15 million jobs had been created by foreign and privately owned enterprises during the five-year period.
In addition, most new positions were filled by young university graduates and migrant labourers, leaving laid-off workers in cities out of the hiring cycle.
