经济聚焦：中国的失业长城

归类于： — Eco Team @ 8:56 pm

Economics focus
经济聚焦

The great wall of unemployed
失业长城

Nov 27th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Joblessness in China is rising, prompting fears of social unrest. But how high is the true unemployment rate?
中国的失业率不断上升，有人担心这会导致社会的不稳定。但是真实的失业率到底是多少？

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.

就业前景”黯淡”，中国人力资源与社会保障部部长尹蔚民如是说。事实上正是因为这个原因，11月26日中国人民银行宣布降息一个百分点还多-这是11年来最大的一次降息-以刺激经济。经济增长放缓已经迫使工厂裁员，越来越多的人担心不断增长的失业大军有朝一日会走上街头，使中国的经济奇迹一朝尽毁。要想评估这种危险的可能性，我们必须考虑当前的失业率究竟有多高。

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.

估计失业率最大的困难是：中国官方关于失业水平与趋势的统计数据都是无意义的。90年代之前，中国政府几乎保证了百分之百的就业率，为每一位工人提供一份”铁饭碗”-也就是终生职位。但在1996到2002年之间，国有企业的严重亏损迫使政府不得不裁掉三分之一的国有员工，而与此同时官方的失业率仅仅是略微上升。90年代中期城市失业率是3%，当前上升到4%。

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%.

官方的失业数据不包括国有企业下岗职工。因此在世纪之初，虽说失业率急剧上升，它仍然低估了真实的失业水平。假以时日，随着下岗职工找到工作或者离开劳动力队伍，数据与事实的差距会缩小。官方失业率的另一个问题是它只覆盖那些登记为城镇人口的人。据估计有 1300万移民从农村搬到了城市，但没有任何正式的纪录反应这一点，因此这部分人完全被统计学家忽视了。就这两个原因调整官方数据后，本世纪初的一些研究得出这样的结论：真实失业率可能高达10%，甚至有可能在20%以上。

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%.

如果失业率真的已经这么高的话，那几乎用不了什么经济放缓，中国就要处在危机的边缘了。然而，最近的一个研究认为，当前的失业率与世纪初相比，已经下降了很多。牛津大学的Albert Park和中国社会科学院的蔡方、杜阳（音译）分析了2000年中国人口普查和2005年小型人口普查（占总人口的1%）的数据，这些数据包括了民工。初步普查数据显示城镇总失业率已经从2000年的8.1%下降到2005年的5.2%。按照国际可比较定义进行调整后，2005年中国失业率不到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.

经济学家还使用了五大城市的城镇劳动力调查数据进行了交叉检验。这一检验同样证明了，城镇失业率，包括民工在内，的确下降了-从2002年的7.3%下降到了2005年的4.4%。民工的失业率低于常住居民的失业率，因为他们一旦找不到工作就会返回老家。图表同样显示，除去民工，城镇失业率从11.1%下降到了6.7%。而且从2005年至今，失业率毫无疑问进一步下降了。今年早些时候，工业主们抱怨找不到足够的工人；实际工资的高速增长也证明了劳动力市场供不应求。因此在中国经济今夏放缓之前，国内失业率很有可能只有3-4%。中国劳动力参与比率-工作的人和找工作的人-对以上数据有着重要的影响，这一比率从2000年的69%下降到2005年的65%。如果失去信心的工人因为找不到工作而离开劳动力大军，那么失业率可能低估了中国所要面临的困难。

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.

但是，中国在过去的五年里失业率大幅下降这一观点还是可信的，右侧世界银行最新的《中国季度报告》显示了，在经济生产能力完全利用情况下，世界银行估算的中国GDP的潜在增长速度。从2003年至2007年，中国实际增长率超过了潜在增长率，由此可见失业率一定是下降的。然后世界银行估计中国的经济增长将会在2008年与2009年间放缓，这也就意味着失业率会上升。世界银行估计明年的增长率仅为7.5%，这是近20年来的最低值，并且远远低于其9.5%潜在增长率.就业前景已经让人沮丧不已-尤其是在南方，今年已有几千家外贸公司宣布倒闭。

Time to rebalance
重回平衡

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%.

中国的相关人士最近正在热议经济增长能否保持在8%以上。这是中国用以抵消劳动力人口增长所必须的增长率。但是8%的数值几乎没有科学依据。在过去的十年，中国经济增长率上升是大量投资和生产率不断提高的结果。也许这就是为什么世界银行估计中国现在的潜在增长率（也就是失业率保持稳定的增长率）在9.5%左右的原因。

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.

对于就业来说，经济增长模式与增长速度同样重要。中国现在创造的工作岗位已经没有像已经那么多了。80年代，1%的GDP 增长带动就业率上升0.3%。在过去的十年，1%GDP增长带动的就业增加率平均下来已经下降到0.1%。增长不再像以前那样属于劳动密集型，因此经济必须增长的更快才能保证失业率下降。

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.

经济转型的一个原因是因为政府支持资本密集型工业，比如说钢铁和制造业，而不是能够创造更多工作的服务业。 Louis Kuijs，世界银行报告的主要作者，认为中国经济增长需要从由工业、投资、出口带动的模式转向由服务和消费带动的模式。为了适应其产品结构，中国需要升值人民币，提高能源价格，解决税制对经济的扭曲问题-中国税制对制造业有利，解除对服务领域的诸多束缚。

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.

更多的劳动密集型增长还能够增加民众的收入和消费，帮助减少中国那令人难堪的巨大贸易顺差。但最重要的是，让更多的工人共享经济繁荣，能够使中国未来社会的免于动荡。