China’s finance and property companies saw their workforces shrink in recent years years for the first time, reflecting the damage caused by a housing market collapse and regulatory probes.
The financial industry had 12.4 million employees at end-2023, down 32% from five years earlier, according to economic census data released Thursday. The number of people working for developers slid 27% to 2.7 million people.
The declines defied a trend that has seen the tertiary, or services, sector add jobs over the years. Financial firms have been hit by a widening government crackdown on graft, deep pay cuts and reduced deal-making. The housing market has suffered the worst downturn in China’s modern history, pushing developers into default.
The gloomy job market has been one of the key reasons stopping people from spending more.
China’s campaign to rein in the debt-laden property sector has had drastic consequences. From the second half of 2021, the country has experienced a rapid decline in property prices and home sales. Many developers suffered from liquidity shortage and deteriorating balance sheets, including Country Garden Holdings Co., once the country’s largest property firm.
In March, housing minister Ni Hong pledged that property firms that are severely insolvent and unable to operate should go bankrupt or restructure. In the past, the Chinese government had preferred financially sound developers over insolvent ones when deciding their eligibility to get government support. This year, it instead focused on injecting liquidity into residential projects so that projects would be completed.
The workforce of the overall property industry rose 14% over the period, according to the census, thanks to increases in the number of real estate management and sales agency jobs.
The number of workers at construction firms fell 12% to 51 million people.
Separately, China also revised the size of its gross domestic product in 2023, raising it by 2.7%, or 3.4 trillion yuan, based on the results of the census, Kang Yi, head of the National Bureau of Statistics, said in a briefing.
