The new data from the National Bureau of Statistics also showed the smallest income growth in more than three decades.
The number of China’s urban jobs dropped by 8.4 million to 459.31 million, the first drop since 1962.
“The decline of the urban labour force reflects the severe economic challenge China faced last year,” Zhiwei Zhang, president at Pinpoint Asset Management, wrote in a note to clients.
He cited the shrinking size of China’s labour force, job losses due to the pandemic and the deceleration of rural workers migrating to cities as the main reasons for the decline.
Zhang added, however, that he expects this to be a temporary drop now that China has abandoned draconian zero-COVID policies aimed at stamping out every outbreak.
China had economic growth of just 3% in 2022- one of the weakest levels in nearly half a century.
Per capita spending fell 0.2% in real terms, the statistics bureau data showed. That followed a jump…
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