A persistent slump in the property market and weak consumption slowed China’s economic recovery in July, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Thursday.
The unemployment rate rose for the first time since February to 5.2% from 5% in June.
Industrial output growth also slowed, rising 5.1% year-on-year in July, compared with a 5.3% rise in June.
Retail sales grew slightly more than analysts had expected, rising 2.7% year-on-year in July, compared with 2% in June.
The recovery in consumption will be further strengthened by recent government policies to boost consumer spending, said National Bureau of Statistics spokeswoman Liu Aihua.
Last month, Beijing announced plans to use 150 billion yuan ($20.9 billion) of government debt to fund swaps of consumer goods such as appliances and cars to stimulate spending.
BEIJING — Consumption contributed about 60% of China’s economic growth in the first half of the year and is expected to play a bigger role in supporting the world’s second-largest economy. Exports, traditionally the country’s strongest engine of economic growth, have been dragged down by frictions with the United States and other Western countries.
On urban unemployment — a sensitive issue for the ruling Communist Party — Liu said the 0.2 percentage point rise from the previous month was due to the impact of the graduation season.
Property investment fell 10.2% year-on-year in the first seven months of the year, after falling 10.1% in the January-June period.
A prolonged slump in China’s property market, after regulators cracked down on excessive borrowing by developers, has sent a chain reaction that has depressed home sales and prices and hit many other sectors of the economy, such as construction, building materials and home appliances.
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