Domestic migrant workers are returning home while job seekers struggle to secure employment, according to Chinese residents.
China’s unemployment crisis is worsening, residents told The Epoch Times, as the country’s exporters of consumer goods lose orders from the United States.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters on April 29 that China could “lose 10 million jobs very quickly” if the U.S.–China tariff war doesn’t de-escalate or 5 million jobs if tariff rates are reduced.
In early April, Goldman Sachs forecast significant challenges for the Chinese economy and labor market, citing high U.S. tariffs, declining exports to the United States, and a slowing global economy.
The investment bank estimated that China could lose about 10 million to 20 million jobs that depend on U.S.-bound exports.
U.S.-based economist Davy Wong said the impact may be larger because of the indirect effects on various businesses, including suppliers for export manufacturers, packaging companies, and logistics companies.
“It could be between 30 million and 35 million jobs,” he told The Epoch Times, noting that the impact is “lethal” to China’s industrial cities.
Before the tariff conflict began this year, China’s college graduates were already in an unemployment crisis. The regime’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that the urban unemployment rate for youth aged 16 to 24, excluding students, fluctuated between 13.2 percent and 18.8 percent from December 2023 to March 2025.
However, many China analysts believe that the official data do not accurately reflect the country’s real youth unemployment rate, which may have reached as high as 46.5 percent in March 2023, Zhang Dandan, a professor at China’s elite Peking University, wrote in an op-ed published by Chinese media outlet Caixin in July 2023.
In an article published in March in the Hong Kong Economic Journal, Ding Xueliang, professor emeritus of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, wrote that the employment rate of college graduates could be as low as 30 percent.
Now, low-skilled laborers are also bracing for a jobless future as factories are expected to shut down, according to some individuals who spoke to The Epoch Times. The interviewees used pseudonyms to protect their identities because of safety concerns and the fear of retaliation from authorities.
By Lily Zhou
