Why China's 25-29 Employment Drop Matters for Global Markets

China's unemployment rate for 25- to 29-year-olds hit 7.7% in March, up from 7.2% a year ago. That's the highest since the National Bureau of Statistics started tracking this age group separately two years ago. Overall unemployment climbed to 5.4%, the highest in a year, and the 16-24 age bracket is sitting near 17%.

This isn't just about one bad month. The timing around Lunar New Year always adds seasonal pressure, and the holiday fell later than usual this year, which probably made March worse. But underneath that, there's a bigger structural issue playing out.

China's labor market is over 700 million people, the world's biggest. When employment trends shift there, it ripples through global trade flows, commodity demand, and consumer spending patterns that affect everything from retail sales to manufacturing orders. The consumer spending piece is already weak. Chinese household savings as a share of disposable income hit 38% in Q1, the highest for that period in three years. That's not what you want to see if you're banking on China's domestic consumption recovery.

This cohort used to be the sweet spot for employers. Fresh grads, new job market entrants, usually stable. Now they're getting squeezed from two directions.

First, there's the Iran conflict, which has scrambled energy exports from the Persian Gulf for eight weeks and counting. That disrupts trade flows and squeezes profit margins for companies that were already cautious about hiring. Ernan Cui at Gavekal Dragonomics pointed out that the cost uncertainties from the war probably messed with hiring plans in March after things looked better earlier in the year.

Second, AI adoption is spreading through China's economy faster than most people expected. Citigroup called it "widespread but still shallow," which sounds reassuring until you look at their estimate that 70 million jobs in China could eventually get displaced. The impact on sentiment is already showing up. Citi surveyed 1,800 people in March and warned that China might be near "a tipping point" where adoption accelerates and displacement becomes real.

The 25-29 group is especially vulnerable because entry-level positions are the easiest to automate or restructure. And joblessness early in your career leaves long-term scarring effects on future employment and earnings. Studies have shown this over and over.

China's leaning harder into manufacturing as its growth engine, but manufacturing is way less labor-intensive than it used to be. The industrial sector makes up about 30% of GDP but only 20% of employment, according to Julian Evans-Pritchard at Capital Economics.

So you've got industry outperforming in Q1, but it's not creating enough jobs to offset weakness in services and construction. Evans-Pritchard put it pretty bluntly: "This doesn't bode well for the consumption outlook."

Even in Guangdong, the southern economic powerhouse, factory workers are struggling because labor-intensive sectors are lagging high-tech export growth. Automation has been creeping through manufacturing for a decade. It's not sudden. It's just accelerating now, and the labor market can't absorb the people being left behind.

Weak domestic consumption in China means the economy leans harder on exports. That creates lopsided growth and makes trade tensions worse, especially with the U.S. and Europe, who are already pushing back on Chinese manufacturing dominance in EVs, solar, and batteries.

Retail sales weakened more than expected in March, which puts more pressure on exports to carry the economy. And if Chinese consumers keep saving at 38% of income instead of spending, that slows demand for everything from imported goods to commodities like copper and oil.

From a trading perspective, watch how this plays out in industrial metals, energy demand, and export-heavy sectors. If China's labor market stays weak, consumption stays weak, and the global reflation story that a lot of people were counting on for 2026 starts to look shaky.

China's unemployment stats have always been sketchy. Migrant workers who lose jobs and go back to their rural hometowns don't show up in the data. The official numbers tend to stay stable even when the economy swings hard. And gig work, which accounts for nearly half of urban jobs, acts as a buffer that hides real joblessness.

The NBS overhauled its survey method in early 2024 after youth unemployment hit record highs and people started asking uncomfortable questions. They split out the 25-29 age group because they said employment typically stabilizes by 29 after early-career instability. But if unemployment for that group is climbing instead of stabilizing, it suggests the structural pressures are worse than the official narrative admits.

If the March spike is seasonal and things normalize in Q2, this becomes a short-term blip. But if unemployment for 25-29-year-olds keeps climbing, you're looking at a generation entering the workforce with worse prospects, lower lifetime earnings, and weaker spending power. That drags on consumption for years.

And if AI adoption hits the tipping point Citi is warning about, displacement could accelerate faster than China's economy can create new jobs to replace them. Manufacturing isn't going to absorb those workers. Services are already softening. Construction isn't picking up the slack.

The other risk is that weak labor markets feed back into the housing crisis. Chinese households won't buy property if they're worried about job stability and income growth. And housing is still the biggest store of wealth for Chinese families, so if that stays frozen, the wealth effect on consumption stays negative.

Keep an eye on the next few months of employment data. If the 25-29 unemployment rate stays above 7.5%, it's probably not seasonal. Watch retail sales and household savings rates. If savings keep climbing and spending stays weak, the domestic consumption story is broken.

For commodity traders, weaker Chinese consumption means lower demand for industrial metals, energy, and raw materials. For equity traders, companies with heavy exposure to Chinese consumer spending are probably facing headwinds. And for macro positioning, this adds to the case that global growth in 2026 is going to be uneven, with China's reflation narrative looking weaker than expected.

The setup here isn't about predicting where Chinese GDP goes. It's about watching what the labor market structure is telling us about domestic demand, and what that means for the stuff global markets actually care about: commodity flows, export pressures, and whether the second-largest economy in the world is going to help lift global growth or drag it down.