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Customers look at clothes advertising discounts of 80% or 70% in a supermarket in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China, on June 9, 2025. Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images BEIJING — China’s consumer spending shows little sign of picking up soon, given uncertainty about future wealth, changing preferences and lack of a social safety net. It’s been four straight months of declining consumer prices, consumer confidence is hovering near historic lows, and the real estate market is struggling to turn around. Analysts repeatedly point to one main factor: stagnant income. Disposable income in China has halved its pace of growth since the pandemic hit in 2020, now growing only by an average of 5% a year, Jeremy Stevens, Beijing-based Asia economist at Standard Bank, said in a report Wednesday. Most jobs aren’t giving much of a raise. Out of 16 sectors, only three — mining, utilities and information technology services — have seen wage growth exceed that of gross domestic product since 2020, he said. Monthly business surveys for May showed contraction in the labor market across the board, especially as factories navigate U.S. tariffs. The unemployment rate among young people aged 16 to 24 and not in school remained high in April at 15.8%. The official jobless rate in cities has hovered around 5%. A record high of 64% Chinese households said in the third quarter of 2024 that they would rather save money rather than spend or invest it, according to a quarterly survey by the People’s Bank of China. While that moderated to 61.4% in the fourth quarter, according to the latest survey released in March, it reflected a trend of more than 60% of respondents preferring to save that’s been recorded since late 2023. And for the respondents who planned to increase spending, education was the…

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Filed under: News - @ June 15, 2025 11:27 pm