According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics of the Communist Party of China, the number of people engaged in so-called “flexible employment” in China reached 200 million at the end of last year, and the flexible employment rate of college graduates has exceeded 16% for two consecutive years. The head of the Bureau of Statistics recently stated that among the people who were engaged in flexible employment last year, more than 1.6 million people were engaged in (network) anchors and related occupations, an increase of nearly three times compared with 2020.
At the end of last year, the Hong Kong correspondent of Taiwan’s Economic Daily, Li Chun, predicted that in 2022, the number of people working in “Double 0” (referring to “flexible employment” and “gig economy”) in China may exceed 300 million. He believes this is the looming “grey rhino” of the mainland economy, but official Chinese figures are still trying to hide the real pain in the labor market.
These figures have raised concerns. “The Epoch Times” columnist Wang He said that the so-called “flexible employment” is just a “flexible word” for the difficult problem of employment in Chinese society, which is difficult to cover up by the CCP. .
On February 9, the party media Guangming.com also published a commentary titled “Young People Don’t Need To Worry About Flexible Employment”, promoting “flexible employment” as the “active choice” of most young people, and saying that it has become a An “important employment form” in China’s labor market. The party media Xinhuanet and many other major Chinese portals have reprinted relevant articles one after another.
Wang He said: “The CCP’s media are all mouthpieces, and most of the reports are fake news for the purpose of brainwashing. No matter how hard times are, they also advocate ‘the situation is very good’. Most of the official figures are fabricated for the purpose of political achievements. If you make up lies, you will turn to ‘flexible employment’.”
Wang He believes that China has been calling “flexible employment” for almost 20 years, which shows that the problem of employment difficulties in China has always existed. Especially after China’s economy collapsed in 2018, “the employment problem can no longer be hidden.”
He also mentioned that the CCP proposed the so-called “six stability” in July 2018, the first of which was to “stabilize employment”; in April 2020, the CCP proposed the so-called “six guarantees”, the first of which was also to “stabilize employment”. “Employment Guarantee”. He analyzed that by 2022, China’s economic situation will not be optimistic from official to private, from domestic to foreign, and the problem of employment difficulties will become more prominent.
China’s official unemployment rate has been steady at around 5 percent in recent years, but other proxies and reports suggest China’s unemployment is much worse than the official monthly figures suggest.
According to the data of the Communist Party of China, the number of college graduates in 2020 is 8.74 million, an increase of 400,000 year-on-year; the total number of college graduates in 2021 is 9.09 million, an increase of 350,000 year-on-year; the number of college graduates in 2022 is expected to be 10.76 million, an increase of 1.67 million year-on-year people.
In this regard, Wang He said that this year, Chinese college graduates will set two records: the highest number of graduates, and the largest increase in the number of graduates. This means that the problem of college students’ employment in 2022 is quite difficult.