Friday August 24, 4:00 PM China's unemployed far outstrip available jobs BEIJING (Reuters) - China's jobless far outnumber available positions, with 2.22 million unemployed competing for 1.54 million jobs in major cities in the second quarter of this year, state media said on Friday. According to a recent survey of 62 cities by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, more than 50 percent of the unemployed were people under the age of 35, the Xinhua news agency and Economic Daily newspaper reported. China's urban unemployment rate was 3.3 percent, or 6.19 million people, at the end of June, official figures showed. Analysts say China's figures vastly underestimate the true number of jobless because they include only those registered as unemployed and omit so-called "xiagang", or laid-off, workers kept on payrolls at token salaries. In another survey of 10 cities, 70 percent of unemployed said they had registered with employment centres in search of new jobs, the reports said. The main concerns of jobless were whether they could receive benefits and quickly find work, they said. Separately, the Ministry of Labour said there were growing disparities between salary levels in China. People working for foreign firms earned an average of 15,037 yuan ($1,816) last year, while those at Hong Kong, Taiwan or Macau-backed companies in China had an average annual salary of 12,547 yuan, the Economic Information Daily reported. But the average salary at private companies was 7,433 yuan last year and that of collective firms was 7,642 yuan, it said. The newspaper gave no average salary for state firms. Those working in the financial sector were the top earners last year. The average annual salary for the financial and insurance industry was 16,033 yuan, followed by the property sector at 14,946 yuan, the newspaper said. But the agricultural, forestry, fishing and mining sectors were at the bottom with average annual salaries ranging from 7,650 yuan to 8,282 yuan, it said.
