China employment steady despite Donald Trump’s claim US trade war cost country ‘3 million jobs’
- Statistics agency says China created 10.97 million jobs in the first nine months of this year, or 99.7 per cent of the government's full-year target
- But independent analysts question if official monthly data underestimates the true unemployment situation
China’s employment situation is holding steady despite claims by US President Donald Trump that China has lost 3 million jobs as a consequence of the trade war, data released on Friday showed.
China created 10.97 million new jobs in the first nine months of this year, or 99.7 per cent of the full-year target of 11 million, according to the country’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The figure comes despite the country’s headline gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the third quarter slowing to 6.0 per cent, the lower end of the government’s 2019 target.
China’s surveyed jobless rate was 5.2 per cent at the end of September, unchanged from the end of August, while its migrant workforce stayed relatively steady at 183.36 million, a slight increase from 182.48 million at the end of June, according to the NBS.
China’s employment situation was stable despite an economic slowdown because overall the economy is growing and each percentage point of growth meant more jobs than before, said Mao Shengyong, a spokesman for the statistics agency.
Mao did not mention Trump directly, but the figures appear to debunk the US leader’s claim in August this year that China has lost 3 million jobs because of his tariff war and that the situation would only get worse.
Despite the rosy picture painted by the NBS, Beijing’s official job statistics are often met with scrutiny from independent analysts who question if they underestimate the true unemployment situation.
On Thursday, economists from global investment research firm Gavekal wrote in a note to clients that China’s official surveyed unemployment rate failed to provide meaningful cyclical signals on the labour market as the monthly data has hovered in a narrow range between 4.8 per cent and 5.3 per cent since its launch in 2018.
China’s statistics agency has also stopped publishing employment figures for the industrial sector since May, depriving economists of data to see “a plausible cyclical story” in employment.
In July, domestic investment bank China International Capital Corporation estimated the industrial sector lost 5 million jobs last year, with between 1.8 to 1.9 million disappearing as a consequence of the US-China trade war.
Reports of large-scale lay-offs and job market stress in the manufacturing and service sectors also point to trouble.
Samsung last month shut down its last mobile handset factory in Huizhou, Guangdong province, dismissing thousands of workers after paying generous redundancies. Meanwhile, hundreds of former and current employees of solar panel manufacturer Hanergy Holding Group protested outside the company's offices last week demanding unpaid salaries.
Job losses have also hit NIO, a Chinese electric car maker that had ambitions to challenge Tesla, and threaten thousands of workers in Hunan province after authorities announced they would ban peer-to-peer lenders.
