(Corrects to employment, not unemployment in last paragraph)
By Joe Cash
BEIJING, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Per capita spending in China
fell 0.2% in real terms last year as harsh COVID curbs took
their toll on consumer appetite, marking only the third such
decline since records for that data began in 1980.
The drop followed a jump of 12.6% in 2021, figures from the
National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed. That in turn was a
rebound from a decline of 4% in 2020 during the initial throes
of the coronavirus pandemic.
China's economy grew just 3% in 2022, one of its weakest
levels in nearly half a century with the country only deciding
late in the year to abandon draconian zero-COVID policies aimed
at stamping out every outbreak.
As a result, income per capita in China grew by just 2.9% in
real terms, the second smallest rise since 1989 and retail sales
fell 0.2%, the second worst performance since 1968.
Xu Tianchen, an economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit
said, a steep drop in income growth for China's lowest income
earners was a key factor behind the weak spending data.
"Before the pandemic, the lowest income group was one of the
fastest growing, but now, quite remarkably, it has become the
slowest income group, dropping from 10.1% (income growth) to
5.2%.”
Unadjusted, income per capita in China grew to 36,883 yuan
($5,310) last year, while spending per capita increased to
24,538 yuan ($3,533), the NBS said.
Rural areas performed better than urbanised zones, with the
incomes of rural households growing by 4.2% in real terms on the
year, compared with 1.9% growth in real terms for urban
residents.
Urban employment dropped by 8.4 million last year, marking
its first decline since 1962.
(Reporting by Joe Cash and Liz Lee; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
