China's Urban Employment and Urbanization Rate: A Re-estimation

Abstract

The present paper argues that China's existing population and employment statistics are misleading, and have failed to include many of the migrant and labor force flows between urban and rural areas. The paper reconciles the differences between official census data and other survey statistics and attempts to recalculate China's urban population and employment figures. Our analyses indicate that official statistics of 2012 underestimate China's urban employment by approximately 47 million while overestimating rural employment by 31 million. The adjusted urbanization rate exceeded 55 percent in 2012, almost 3 percentage points higher than the official statistics. Nevertheless, there remains much potential for rural-to-urban migration. More specifically, if the current bottlenecks in household registration, social security and public welfare systems can be removed or relaxed, China's urbanization rate could rise by another 10 percentage points or even more over the next decade.