Charts of the Day: China’s Youth Unemployment Hits Another Record High at 21.3%

Youth unemployment in China surged to yet another record high in June, official data showed Monday, underscoring the increasingly dire job market that millions of fresh graduates face this summer and the pressure on policymakers to expand recruitment.

The surveyed jobless rate among people aged 16 to 24 in urban areas was 21.3% in June, the highest in available data going back to 2018, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The rate has hit record highs for three straight months since April and the latest reading was more than four times the national surveyed jobless rate among all urban workers, which stayed flat in June at 5.2%.