中国：失业长城——The great wall of unemployed

 　　中国的真正失业率高于20%(经济学家) 
　　Nov 27th 2008　　From The Economist print edition
　　薛晓璐 译
　　在中国，失业率的上升引发了人们关于社会不安定的恐慌。
　　然而，中国的失业率到底有多高呢？ 
　　据中国的人力资源和社会保障部部长尹蔚民说，中国的就业前景很“严峻”。特别严峻，事实上，在11月26日中国人民银行不得不下调利率超过一个百分点（在11年内下调最高）来刺激增长。经济增长放缓使得工厂不得不裁员，很多人越来越担心这些日渐庞大的事业队伍有天会走上街头，使中国经济增长奇迹被瓦解。为了测估这种风险，我们必须了解失业率将会达到多高。
　　测估的障碍是，中国官方提供的关于失业水平和趋势的数字都是毫无意义的。在九十年代，政府用给工人提供“铁饭碗”的形式或多或少的保证了充分就业。然而，国企的持续亏损使得政府只好在1996到2002年裁掉了1/3的国企员工，官方公布的失业率只是微幅走高。城市失业率，从九十年代中期的3%升为现今的4%。
　　但是官方的失业率不包括国有企业下岗的工人。因而在本世纪初，当失业达到高峰时，它很严重的低估了真正的失业率。随着时间推移，许多下岗工人再就业或者退休了，调查结果的扭曲将会减少。官方失业数据的另一个缺陷是，它只统计那些在劳动所登记为城镇居民的人。大约1.3亿的外来务工人员从乡下来到城市，然而却没有正式的关于他们住在那里的纪录因而他们在数据统计时被忽略。一些本世纪早期的调查显示，官方数据经过调整和增加了这两个方面后显示，真正的失业率将会超过10%——甚至会高于20%。
　　如果失业率已经如此之高，那么它将不会引起太大的经济减速，将之推入危机。然而，最新的研究显示失业率在本世纪初已经下降了很多。牛津大学的 阿尔伯特·帕克以及中国社会科学院的蔡方和杜阳（音译）分析了中国2000年的人口普查和2005年的小普查（覆盖人口的1%），其中包括外来务工人员。人口普查的原始数据表明，城市的总失业率已从2000年的8.1%下降为2005年的5.2%。但是2005年国际上的失业率低于4%。
　　经济学家们还运用了2005年五大城市的城市劳动力调查来核对和验证。上图证实了城市失业率（包括外来务工人员）已从2002年的7.3%下降为2005年的4.4%。然而外来务工人员的失业率比常住民的低，因为他们找不到工作就会回家。如上图所示，除去外来务工者，城市失业率从11.1%降为6.7%自从2005年以来，失业毫无疑问的进一步下降。今年初，工厂老板抱怨他们不能找到足够的工人，同时工资的大幅增长也显示劳动力供不应求。因而，在夏天中国经济开始下滑之前，失业率大概只有3-4%。这些数据唯一重要的限制是中国的劳动力参与率（正在工作或正在找工作的）从2000年的69%降为65%。如果沮丧的工人因为找不到工作而放弃劳动，那么这些失业率可能低估了他们所面临的困难。
　　但是，发现在五年内中国的失业率大幅下降还是很有意义的。右边来自世界银行最新中国经济季报的图表显示，如果经济满负荷运行，GDP增长与其预估的潜在增长率相关。从2003到2007年，实际增长远远超过了其潜力，所以失业率确实应该下降。然而，世界银行预测中国的GDP增长率将会在2008和2009年下降，这意味着失业率将会上升。预测GDP明年只增长7.5%，将是近20年内增速最慢，远低于其9.5%的潜在增长率。一些工作已经消失，特别是南部，数千个小型出口企业在今年关闭。
　　该是调整的时候了
　　目前，中国的评论员正在关注中国的经济是否能继续保持每年8%的增幅。依据旧的经验法则，为了经济增长，必须在劳动力市场注入新的活力。但是8%的数据并没有多少科学依据。在过去十年，大量投资和快速提高生产力使得GDP增长率持续上涨。也许这就是为什么世界银行估计在保持失业率稳定的情况下，中国现在的潜在增长率为9.5%
　　就业与相应类型的经济增长是同步的。较之过去，中国创造的工作机会越来越少。在八十年代，GDP每增长一个百分点，就业率就会增加0.3%。在过去十年，GDP增长一个百分点，平均只增加0.1%个就业机会。经济增长带来的工作机会变少了，因而为了减少失业率，经济必须更快增长。
　　现状形成的一个原因是，较之创造更多就业机会的服务业，政府更倾向于像钢铁、机械等资本密集型产业。世界银行的报告的主要作者路易·库斯认为中国需要改变依靠工业、投资和出口的混合经济增长方式，转向服务和消费。要调整经济结构，需要进一步紧缩财政，提高能源价格，取消倾向于制造业的扭曲的税收制度，并打破服务业的各种枷锁。
　　更多的劳动密集型经济增长会增加收入和消费，也将会有助于减少中国尴尬的大量外贸盈余。然而更重要的是，这将使得更多的工人享受经济飞速增长的利处，减少和防止将来社会动乱。
 　　The great wall of unemployed
　　Nov 27th 2008　　From The Economist print edition
　　原文网页：http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12677296
　　Joblessness in China is rising, prompting fears of social unrest. But how high is the true unemployment rate?
　　THE employment outlook is “grim” according to Yin Weimin, China’s minister of human resources and social security. So grim, in fact, that on November 26th the People’s Bank of China slashed rates by more than a percentage point—the most in 11 years—to boost growth. The slowing economy has led factories to cut jobs, and there are mounting fears that the swelling ranks of the unemployed might one day take to the streets and disrupt China’s economic miracle. To assess such risks one must consider how high unemployment might rise.
　　The snag is that both the level and trend of China’s official jobless figures are meaningless. Until the 1990s, the government more or less guaranteed full employment by providing every worker with an “iron rice bowl”—a job for life. But when soaring losses at state-owned firms forced the government to lay off about one-third of all state employees between 1996 and 2002, the official unemployment rate rose only slightly. Today it is 4% in urban areas, up from 3% in the mid-1990s.
　　But the official rate excludes workers laid off by state-owned firms. Thus at the start of this decade, when lay-offs peaked, it hugely understated true unemployment. Over time, as laid-off workers have found jobs or left the labour force, the distortion will have shrunk. Another flaw is that the official unemployment statistics cover only people who are registered as urban dwellers. An estimated 130m migrant workers have moved from the country to the cities, but there is no formal record that they live there, so they are ignored by the statisticians. After adjusting the official figures for these two factors, several studies earlier this decade concluded that the true unemployment rate was above 10%—and might be even as high as 20%.
　　If unemployment is already so high, it would not take much of an economic slowdown to push it to crisis levels. However, a more recent study suggests that the jobless rate has fallen a lot since the start of this decade. Albert Park, of the University of Oxford, and Cai Fang and Du Yang, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, have analysed China’s 2000 census and 2005 mini-census (covering 1% of the population), which include migrant workers. The raw census data suggest that the total urban jobless rate fell from 8.1% in 2000 to 5.2% in 2005. But when the jobless figures are adjusted to an internationally comparable definition, the rate in 2005 was less than 4%. 
　　As a crosscheck, the economists also used the 2005 Urban Labour Survey of five big cities. This confirmed that the urban unemployment rate, including migrant workers, had indeed fallen—from 7.3% in 2002 to 4.4% in 2005 (see chart). But the rate for migrant workers is lower than for permanent residents because they return home if they cannot find work. As the chart also shows, excluding migrants, the urban unemployment rate fell from 11.1% to 6.7%. And since 2005, unemployment has undoubtedly fallen further. Earlier this year, factory bosses complained that they could not find enough workers; and faster real-wage growth also suggested that demand for labour was outpacing supply. Thus before China’s economy started to sputter this summer, its jobless rate was probably only 3-4%. One important qualification to these numbers is that China’s labour-force participation rate—ie, those in work or seeking it—fell to 65% in 2005 from 69% in 2000. If discouraged workers have left the labour force because they could not find a job, then the unemployment rate may understate the hardship they face.
　　But the finding that unemployment has fallen sharply in China over the past five years makes sense. The right-hand chart, from the World Bank’s latest China Quarterly Update, shows GDP growth relative to its estimated potential growth rate if the economy operated at full capacity. From 2003 to 2007, actual growth ran ahead of potential, so unemployment should indeed have dropped. However, the bank expects China’s growth to fall below trend in 2008 and 2009, implying that unemployment will climb. The bank forecasts growth of only 7.5% next year, its slowest for almost 20 years and well below its estimated potential growth rate of around 9.5%. Jobs are already disappearing—especially in southern China, where thousands of small exporting firms have closed this year.
　　Time to rebalance
　　Chinese commentators are currently fixated upon whether the economy can continue to grow by at least 8% a year. That was the old rule of thumb for the growth needed to absorb new entrants into the labour market. But that 8% figure has little scientific basis. Over the past decade, the trend growth rate has increased as a result of heavy investment and faster improvements in productivity. Maybe that is why the World Bank reckons that China’s potential growth rate (ie, the rate needed to keep unemployment steady) is now about 9.5%.
　　For employment, the type of growth matters as much as its pace. China is creating fewer new jobs than it used to. In the 1980s, each 1% increase in GDP led to a 0.3% rise in employment. Over the past decade, 1% GDP growth has yielded, on average, only a 0.1% gain in jobs. Growth has become less job-intensive, so the economy needs to grow faster to hold down unemployment.
　　One reason for this is that the government has favoured capital-intensive industries, such as steel and machinery, rather than services which create more jobs. Louis Kuijs, the main author of the World Bank’s report, argues that China needs to shift the mix of its growth from industry, investment and exports to services and consumption. To adjust the structure of production requires a further strengthening of the yuan, raising the price of energy, scrapping distortions in the tax system which favour manufacturing, and removing various shackles on the services sector.
　　More labour-intensive growth would also boost incomes and consumption and so help to reduce China’s embarrassingly large trade surplus. But most important, by allowing more workers to enjoy the rewards of rapid growth, it could help to prevent future social unrest.