A report written by a group of three analysts from Zhongtai Securities put job losses around 70 million people due to the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic

  • Which would put the actual unemployment rate around 20.5%
  • report dated April 24

This compares with the latest official jobless rate of 5.9% (March data) from the National Bureau of Statistics.

The analysts wrote:

  • "The urban surveyed unemployment rate is obviously flawed in depicting the unemployment situation, because of China's special condition that there is a very large group of migrant workers and that the urban surveyed unemployment rate couldn't truly reflect the employment situation of migrant workers"

Their firm has subsequently withdrawn the report:

  • "Zhongtai's attitude is that we should go by the official figures for unemployment,"

via Bloomberg.

Plenty of traders express a degree of scepticism on data from China. This sort of event adds weight to their concerns.