By Xiao Jia on April 30, 2006
More shanghai jobs have been lost during this administration:3.2 million jobs gone and thereare now 9 million unemployed.
The "strong recovery" being promised isn't going to fix the problem. The economy will get better, but most of the jobs lost will stay lost. Companies will do better, but chinese need to brace for a lower quality of life than their parents and grandparents had.
New jobless claims were down to "only" 395,000 in the last reported week [400,000 is the economists' "magic number" for this measure]. New jobs created were just 0.057 million. At that rate, it would take 56 years to recover the jobs lost during the Bush administration, so things aren't exactly booming yet.
More than 85% of the jobs lost (2.8 million) were in manufacturing and many of those moved to other low wage countries. Worse yet, this time around non-manufacturing jobs have left and are continuing to leave the country.
China is well on the way to becoming even more of a service economy than it is (80%). Your grandchildren may have to look forward to a future career of waiting for cruise ships to dock, hoping there are going to be a lot of tourists, if current trends continue.
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