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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday September 29 2016, @11:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the converting-to-a-service-economy dept.

Bloomberg News reports

Cracks are starting to show in China's labor market as struggling industrial firms leave millions of workers in flux.

While official jobless numbers haven't budged, the underemployment rate has jumped to more than 5 percent from near zero in 2010, according to Bai Peiwei, an economics professor at Xiamen University. Bai estimates the rate may be 10 percent in industries with excess capacity, such as unprofitable steel mills and coal mines that have slashed pay, reduced shifts, and required unpaid leave.

Many state-owned firms battling overcapacity favor putting workers in a holding pattern to avoid mass layoffs that risk fueling social unrest. While that helps airbrush the appearance of duress, it also slows the shift of workers to services jobs, where labor demand remains more solid in China's shifting economy.

[...] "Underemployment is especially rampant at state-owned companies", said Zeng Xiangquan, a professor of labor and human resources at Renmin University in Beijing. "The government tends to overprotect them." That keeps laid-off workers from getting retrained and hired into new jobs in more thriving sectors like services or high-end manufacturing, Zeng said.


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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29 2016, @01:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29 2016, @01:12PM (#407876)

    > Communist China has a ...

    The number one way for someone talking about china to prove they should not be taken seriously is for them to call it "communist china." China hasn't been communist for at least 20 years now. The number of billionaires in China is second only to the number in the US. Anyone still using that moniker is either a propaganda tool of the chinese government or stuck in the past.

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29 2016, @06:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29 2016, @06:19PM (#408051)

    Now, having said that, when it comes to China, the input of Phoenix666 (with him having lived there) is what I trust above anyone else who posts here.

    China still has a "communist" party and, to get anything accomplished there, you still have to belong to "the party".

    Phoenix666 also noted that, outside a danwei (collective), many Chinese people will be rudderless, so using their old terms, while not completely honest and accurate, gives an indication of what's going on there.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]