Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World's Economy

by Adam Tooze

China’s official unemployment statistics showed a tiny increase during the crisis from just 5.3 percent to 6 percent. But the unemployment insurance system covers only half of the urban workforce and a fifth of migrant workers. Despite the concerted effort to restart production, in March 2020, of the normal workforce of 174 million long-range migrants, only 129 million were at work.66 That implied a loss of at least 45 million jobs. Allowing for migrant workers not counted in the official data, the number in March was probably closer to 80 million lost jobs. Even the National Bureau of Statistics was willing to admit that at the worst point in the crisis, the number of people idled in China’s cities amounted to 18.3 percent. Combing carefully through the data, analysts at BNP Paribas concluded that as many as 132 million workers were either temporarily unemployed, displaced, or furloughed, which would amount to 30 percent of China’s urban workforce.