Zhu Tian, a professor at China Europe International Business School: The official unemployment rate underestimates the employment crisis, with 320 million people turning to flexible employment

Zhu Tian, ​​an economics professor at Shanghai China Europe International Business School, said that the official urban unemployment rate survey cannot reflect the seriousness of the employment problem because 320 million people have switched to flexible employment.

China's urban surveyed unemployment rate has remained around 5.2% in recent years. However, Zhu Tian, ​​an economics professor at China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, analyzed that this data cannot reflect the seriousness of the employment problem and the current lack of total demand, because more than 300 million people have turned to flexible employment with long working hours and low income per unit time.

The official WeChat public account of China Europe International Business School recently published an article by Zhu Tian discussing employment issues. He believes that the real employment issues in China today cannot be seen in the unemployment rate figures.

According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the national average urban surveyed unemployment rate from January to July this year was 5.2%, the same as the same period last year. Except for rising to 5.6% in 2022 due to the impact of the Wuhan pneumonia (COVID-19) epidemic, other years since 2021 have basically remained between 5.1% and 5.2%. The surveyed unemployment rate of urban youth aged 16 to 24, excluding school students, has generally been between 16% and 17% in the past three years. Judging from these two indicators, China's employment situation does not seem to have changed much in recent years.

But Zhu Tian pointed out that this is not consistent with the actual feelings of many people. The People's Bank of China's Urban Depositors Survey shows that the employment feeling index dropped from 43.9 in the first quarter of 2021 to 35.1 in the first quarter of 2024, and dropped to 29.2 in the fourth quarter of 2025. Nowadays, companies are becoming more and more cautious in recruiting, and it is becoming more and more difficult for college graduates to find jobs. Many people who used to have stable jobs have begun to drive online taxis, deliver food, or engage in other flexible employment.

According to a recent report released by the "China New Employment Form Research Center" of Capital University of Economics and Business, China's flexible employment population will increase from 200 million in 2021 to 280 million in 2025, and is estimated to reach 320 million this year.

Zhu Tian said that flexible employment has become a huge employment "reservoir". When more and more people who can't find stable jobs switch to flexible employment, the pressure on the job market will not necessarily manifest as an increase in the unemployment rate, but may manifest as more unstable jobs, longer working hours, and lower income per unit time. This may be the key to understanding today's employment problems in China.

Zhu Tian said that the pressure on China's job market can be seen from the fact that the number of people receiving unemployment insurance benefits has doubled in four years from 2.59 million in 2021 to 5.57 million in 2025, but the number of unemployment insurance participants has only increased by 8.5%, and the people receiving unemployment insurance benefits in China are only a small part of the unemployed population.

Zhu Tian said that if we only judge China’s employment situation based on changes in the urban surveyed unemployment rate, we may underestimate the severity of the current shortfall in aggregate demand and the intensity of macro policies required.