Q: How many unemployed workers does China have?

　　A: No one really knows。

　　The most readily available and most official statistic on unemployment in China is the one that just about everybody including government officials agrees tells you the least. The registered urban unemployment rate was 4.2% at the end of 2008, according to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (in Chinese). But that only means 8.86 million urban residents were registered to receive unemployment benefits; the statistic doesn't even attempt to count the actual number of people without work. Nor do the figures include migrant workers, a major component of China's labor force。

　　Since the onset of the current crisis, the government has tried to get a better grasp of the situation, sending officials fanning out across the country to try to count the number of migrant workers without jobs. Results varied, but a survey by the Ministry of Agriculture got the most attention. It put the number of lost jobs at roughly 20 million, out of a total migrant population of about 130 million, by early 2008。

　　Last week, the National Bureau of Statistics reported the results of its latest survey of 68,000 rural households. It raised the estimate of the current number of rural migrant workers to 140 million, and said about 23 million were looking for new work either in cities or in their home region. So there seems to be a rough agreement on at least the order of magnitude of recent job losses。

　　The government says it is trying to move toward a better method: using surveys to estimate the proportion of the total workforce that do not have jobs. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences attempted to do that with its own survey of more than 7,000 people in mid-2008. It found that 9.4% of its urban sample would be considered 'economically active' but without work, i.e. formally unemployed (see this Chinese report). If its survey is representative, that would imply the real unemployment rate is more than twice the official figure even before the crisis。

　　That's not the upper end of estimates. Professor Zeng Xiangquan, president of the School of Labor and Personnel at Renmin University in Beijing, reportedly said (in Chinese here) that the NBS' initial attempts at using surveys to estimate unemployment have over the past three years come back with a rate of over 20%。

　　Counting the number of unemployed people isn't a simple task even in countries with much more sophisticated survey techniques, and there is often wide variation in estimates. For instance, the U.S. government issues a broader jobless rate that shows much higher levels than the one more commonly quoted。

　　But the varying numbers have led members of the confused public to gather online and ask (in Chinese)： How high, exactly, is China's jobless rate？

　　问：中国有多少失业人员？

　　答：没有人确切地知道。

　　关于中国失业状况最容易获得、也是最官方的统计数据是包括政府官员在内的所有人一致公认最不能说明问题的。中国人力资源和社会保障部的数据显示，2008年底的城镇登记失业率为4.2%。但这个数字仅仅意味着有886万城镇居民登记领取了失业保险，根本就没有费事去计算实际上有多少人没工作。这个统计数据也没有将民工计算在内，而民工是中国劳动力的一个重大组成部分。

　　从当前的危机发生之始，政府就试图更好地了解形势，分派官员到全国各地，试图统计无业民工的数量。统计结果各不相同，但农业部的一项调查引起了最大的关注。该调查给出的失业民工人数为2,000万，而2008年初的外出打工者总计为1.3亿左右。

　　上周，国家统计局发布了对6.8万个农村住户进行的最新调查的结果。调查结果预计，现有的外出民工数量增加至1.40亿人，其中大约2,300万人仍在城市或家乡寻找新工作。这样看来，至少在最近的失业情况的数量级上，前后两项调查得出了大致相同的结论。

　　政府称其正试图采用更好的方法：通过调查来估算整体劳动力中的失业人口比例。中国社会科学院在2008年年中曾采用过这个方法，对逾7,000人进行了调查，结果发现9.4%的城镇调查样本被视为“经济活动人口”，但却没有工作，也就是说在形式上处于失业状态。如果这份调查有代表性，那就意味着即便是在危机开始之前，真实的失业率也高出官方数据一倍以上。

　　那还不是失业率估算的上限值。据报导，中国人民大学劳动人事学院院长曾湘泉教授说，国家统计局最初的打算是用调查法来估算失业人数，结果过去三年的失业率突破了20%。

　　即便对那些拥有更成熟的调查方法的国家来说，计算失业人口数量也绝非易事，而且所得结论往往偏差很大。举例来说，美国政府发布了一个很宽泛的失业率区间数据，其上限较之人们通常引用的水平要高得多。

　　但是数据上的差异使得公众大惑不解，他们凑到网上提出了这样一个问题：中国的失业率到底有多高？