National Bureau of Statistics spokesman Fu Linghui on Tuesday said the release of the data would be suspended from August as the way the jobless rate was calculated needed to be improved to reflect the changing society.

He said there were 65 million students in the 16-24 age group and it was questionable whether they should be included in the unemployment figures before they graduated.

On the face of it, this seems quite reasonable.

You would expect that youth unemployment would capture the young people in the labour force, i.e. the number of people actually looking to work.

Modern problems require modern solutions. They deleted the data. Now unemployment disappeared. Also the people who posted the data.

Nooo they wouldn't do that¡ Didn't people say here that the numbers are western fabrications

The new numbers will be the best numbers ever

"In recent years, the number of university students has continued to expand," Fu said. "The main responsibility of current students is studying. Society has different views on whether students looking for jobs before graduation should be included in labour force surveys and statistics."

This issue, as well as the definition of the age range currently set at 16-24, "needs further research," Fu said.

This is not only completely and utterly reasonable and rational, but this is also a really pleasing amount of transparency in explaining their decision making process

They should just do the same as Hungary: only count the "jobseekers", and disregard people from that list if they can't secure a job for too long. (Did happen to me in Hungary, except I was registered as a participant of the government humiliating "public employment" program, except I neither got the 8 hour job, nor the half the minimum wage.)

This is the best summary I could come up with:

BEIJING, Aug 15 (Reuters) - China's statistics bureau said on Tuesday it had suspended publication of youth jobless data, citing the need to improve methodology in the way it measured unemployment among young people, which has hit record highs in recent months.

The decision announced shortly after the release of weaker-than-expected factory and retail sales data sparked a rare backlash on social media amid growing frustration about employment prospects in the country.

Young Chinese are facing their toughest summer job-hunting season after regulatory clamp-downs in recent years left traditional sources of graduate employment -- including the property, tech and education sectors -- bruised.

The most recent NBS data on youth unemployment, published last month, showed the jobless rate jumping to a record high of 21.3% in June.

The NBS's decision was immediately mocked on Chinese social media, with a related hashtag receiving over 10 million views on microblogging site Weibo.

A Chinese professor last month said the country's true youth jobless rate may have been closer to 50% in March, in rare public comments about the matter published in an article for financial magazine Caixin.

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