Posted on 11/10/2013 9:14:08 PM PST by TexGrill
Li Keqiang, in a speech released last week, said a 7.2% annual increase in China’s gross domestic product creates 10 million new jobs a year. The premier, therefore, believes each percentage point of growth produces 1.4 million jobs.
Morgan Stanley’s Ruchir Sharma, writing in the Wall Street Journal just before the release of Li’s speech, told us that each percentage point of growth results in 1.6 million to 1.7 million new jobs.
Beijing’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that last year China’s GDP jumped 7.7%. Applying Sharma’s formula, the economy should have created 12.3 to 13.1 million new jobs in 2012. Applying Premier Li’s formula, the number is 10.8 million new jobs.
So how many jobs were in fact created last year? The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security reported that 767.04 million working-age Chinese—those aged 15 to 59—were employed in 2012, 2.84 million more than in 2011. In other words, the number of jobs increased 0.37% last year at a time when gross domestic product grew, according to NBS, 7.7%.
What makes this even more interesting is that China’s services sector, an obvious job-creator, is expanding fast according to NBS. Services accounted for 44.6% of GDP last year, up from 41.9% in 2011. Output from services grew 8.1% in 2012, a pace faster than GDP.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
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