China Suspends Youth Unemployment Report

The unabating struggle for young people to find work is another sign of concern about the Chinese economy, the world’s second-largest. It is flagging seven months after the government abruptly ended the “zero Covid” push, plagued by falling exports and souring consumer confidence, as well as a dangerous condition known as deflation or chronically lower prices.

China did issue several other economic reports as scheduled on Tuesday. Many were gloomy: July retail sales and growth in industrial production — a measure of the output of China’s factories, mines and power plants — fell short of expectations. Investments in real estate developments fell 8.5 percent in the first seven months of the year.

Earlier Tuesday, China’s central bank made a series of moves that pushed key interest rates to new lows. The central bank, the People’s Bank of China, is expected to lower its benchmark lending rate, which determines the interest rates for mortgages and corporate loans, next week. The aim is to juice the economy by spurring banks to lend more.

The data on youth unemployment is not the first economic report suspended this year by the Chinese authorities. This spring, the National Bureau of Statistics halted the public release of monthly readings of consumer confidence, a series that it launched 33 years ago.

Previous surveys showed that consumer confidence plummeted during a two-month lockdown in Shanghai, China’s most populous city, in 2022. Confidence barely began to recover in the early months of this year, even after Beijing lifted lockdowns nationwide in early December.

Daisuke Wakabayashi and Keith Bradsher contributed to this report.