Employment and Wages

Brief Introduction

I. the data in this chapter show the basic conditions of China’s labour economy, including the main data of labour statistics of the whole country and 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities under the direct leadership of the central government, such as the economically active population, number of the employed persons and staff and workers, number of persons employed in the urban and rural private enterprises and self-employed persons in industry and commerce, number of registered unemployed persons in urban areas, total wages and average wages of the staff and workers and the changes in index, etc.

II. There are three main sources for the data published in this chapter:

 (1) Data on basic conditions of employment (tables 5-1 to 5-13), new-employed persons in urban areas and total wage bill of fully employed workers and staff (tables 5-17 to 5-23), detailed tables on the educational level etc. of employed and urban unemployed persons (tables 5-24 to 5-33) are collected and tabulated in accordance with the Comprehensive Labour Statistics Reporting System, Sample Survey on the Change of Population, Urban Labour Force Survey, and Rural Social and Economic Survey of the National Bureau of Statistics. They are prepared and provided by the Department of Population, Social and Science Statistics, NBS.

 (2) Data on the number of registered unemployed persons in the urban areas , the employment services and the exchanges of labour force (tables 5-24 and 5-25) are collected in line with the Statistical Reporting System on Training and Employment and provided by the Ministry of Labour and Social Insurance.

(3) Data on the number of persons employed in the urban and rural private enterprises and self-employed persons in industry and commerce (tables 5-14 to 5-16) are collected through Statistical Reports on Basic Conditions of Urban and Rural Private Enterprises and Statistical Reports on Basic Conditions of Urban and Rural Individual Industrial and Commercial Business and provided by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.

III. Coverage of statistics and survey methods:

 (1) Coverage of statistics: the Comprehensive Labour Statistics Reporting System covers all independent accounting units. the Sample Survey on the Change of Population covers total population of China. the Urban Labour Force Survey covers population aged 15 and over in the urban areas, i.e. the areas under the jurisdiction of districts in the cities or streets in other cities where there are no districts, or neighborhood committees in towns in cities or counties. the Rural Social and Economic Survey covers all rural areas below township level in China. the Statistical Reporting System on Training and Employment covers all urban population of China. the Statistical Reports on Basic Conditions of Urban and Rural Private Enterprises and on Basic Conditions of Urban and Rural Individual Industrial and Commercial Business cover the whole society.

(2) Survey methodology: A complete enumeration and reporting from lower levels to higher levels is used in the Comprehensive Labour Statistics Reporting System. A multi-stage stratified cluster sampling scheme is used in the Urban Labour Force Survey and in the Sample Survey on the Population Changes. the Rural Social and Economic Survey adopts a multi-state balanced systematic sampling scheme. Statistics on training, employment, private enterprises and self-employed business are collected compiled on basis of administrative records.

IV. Since 1989, “China Labour Statistical Yearbook” has been jointly published by the National Bureau of Statistics and the Ministry of Labour and Social Insurance, which provides more detailed data than those in this chapter.