Thanks for

the downloading the more or less podcast.

I'm Celia Hatton. For the last decade I've been covering China for BBC News.

As regular listeners know, more or less is usually your guide to the numbers in the news

and in life.

But today, we're going to do something a bit different because when it comes to

China numbers have a strange way we're going missing. Let's start with a very important number that the Chinese government used to publish

the number of young people who can't get a job. The use unemployment rate in

China has been on a rising trend over the past few years.

The number we saw back in June 2023 reached about 21.3%.

This is Christian Yao from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.

21.3 is a record high number, and that's a big problem for Beijing.

It's not good in any country for lots of frustrated young people to be unable to find jobs.

High unemployment can lead to political instability. And it's even more of an

issue in China where the now defunct One Child Policy has created millions of so-called 4-1 families, featuring four grandparents, two parents, and

one child.

Many young people carry the expectations and economic burden of their parents and grandparents.

So youth unemployment is a number worth watching and we used to watch it until August. When the government announced it wasn't publishing it anymore.

Starting this August, the release of urban unemployment rates for youth and other age groups will be suspended.

The unemployment number wasn't being calculated correctly, explained Fooling Hoi, China's statistics

chief. Up until then it included students who were looking for jobs

before graduation and some thought that wasn't accurate. So the government just

...