Job hunters in Chongqing

economy - Complicated discussions on unemploymency rate

Just like in any country, the number of unemployed is a politically charged one in China. Last month I already pointed at an upcoming change in counting the urban unemployed.
An expected spike in urban unemployed, here reported by the China Daily, to 17 million is still nothing compared to the 150 million unemployed at the country side, but who expects politics to be logic?
The article in the China Daily reveals a heavy infighting between different departments on who gets the honor of bringing the bad news. The headline says, the urban unemploymency "might' reach a record height, does not say it is certain.
The Ministry of Labour and Social Security rather uses the 11th Five Year Plan as their benchmark, which is politically always safer although not more true. Also our partners at the China Wage Indicator (both research institutes of the same ministry and the Chinese Academy of Social Science) just hope that our future data-set do not challenge any official number on the unemploymency. Well, that is not going to be the case, since our data focus on relatively micro-data, but their fear is telling.