Chart of the Day: China’s Record-Breaking Unemployment Rates Amid Covid Lockdowns

China’s urban unemployment rates surged in April, with multiple indicators hitting two-year highs, as Covid lockdowns slowed down economic activity in many regions.

The surveyed urban unemployment rate, which measures the number of unemployed job seekers over the age of 16 against a sample of the population, came in last month at 6.1%, 0.3 percentage points higher than the March reading, data released Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics show. The figure marks the highest since February 2020, when Covid-19 raged across the country.