The World's Mary Kay Magistad reports that China's leaders are confident that their economy is already showing signs of reviving -- and that new jobs will be created soon for new graduates and the unemployed.
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LISA MULLINS: I'm Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. More Americans are out of work today than at any time in the past quarter century. The US Labor Department reports 12-and-a-half million Americans are jobless. That's a number not seen since the Reagan administration. President Barack Obama spoke in front of a police academy graduating class in Ohio today. He said he signed the stimulus package precisely to save jobs.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: So many of you have been watching jobs disappear long before this recession hit. I don't need to tell this graduating class what it's like to know that your job might be next, because up until a few weeks ago, that is precisely the future that this class faced -- a future that millions of Americans still face right now. Well, that is not a future I accept for the United States of America.
MULLINS: Stock markets abroad had anticipated the unemployment figure. They didn't like it but the markets didn't nosedive, either. Wall Street's Dow actually ended slightly up today. Asian's markets had a rougher day, though, partly because they were disappointed that China has not put more money into its stimulus package. Top Chinese economic officials say they think they're already doing enough and that they're already seeing results. The 20 to 30 million Chinese who have lost their jobs in recent months hope they're right. And as The World's Mary Kay Magistad reports, so do 7 million upcoming college graduates.
MARY KAY MAGISTAD: There's a new urgency at job fairs like this one in Beijing this week – more people being more pushy, some a little desperate. They form long lines at some of the booths, offering resumes and looking hopeful. These are good times for those with jobs to offer, like Zhu Yuan Hong, a human resources manager at a company that turns sand into sidewalk tiles and molds for making engines.
ZHU: Because of the effects of the financial crisis, many companies have laid off workers and many of them are very competent. So we are hoping to find the best among those people and use this as an opportunity.
MAGISTAD: Zhu says his company's got 2500 applications – for just a couple dozen jobs. Most of the jobs, like many others at this fair, require previous experience. That leaves a lot of soon-to-be college graduates feeling frustrated. One is Chen Chung, who majored in broadcast journalism.
CHEN CHUNG: It is a bad time to get into the society. But we have no choice – so face it and don't be afraid, I think.
MAGISTAD: China's leaders worry about what will happen if the patience of young graduates like Chen Chung runs out. The government says it's doing all they can to revive the economy and create jobs, both for graduates and for laid off factory workers. At a news conference today in Beijing, Central Bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said there are signs that the stimulus plan is already starting to work.
ZHOU XIAOCHUAN: The economic figures are stabilizing and recovering, which shows that the policies have begun to have an impact.
MAGISTAD: One good sign is that there hasn't been a new wave of laid off factory workers returning home since last month's lunar New Year celebrations. But the government remains worried about social unrest that could come if too many people are feeling too much of an economic pinch. So the government has pledged to ramp up deficit spending sevenfold this year, to keep the economy growing. Even with that, deficit spending in China will still amount to less than 3 percent of GDP, compared to the United States, where the deficit is more than 12 percent of GDP. China's Central Bank Governor Zhou took a dig at the United States when asked by an American reporter today what will happen with the Chinese currency. The US has long complained the Renminbi isundervalued, giving China's exports an unfair advantage. Zhou said, “We're wondering what will happen in the country where this crisis originated. If we could know that, we could know what to do.†The message seemed to be that China has enough to deal with, absorbing the fallout of financial mistakes made in America, keeping its economic engine running, and perhaps in the process even giving a jumpstart to the global economy, to make currency concessions anytime soon. For The World, I'm Mary Kay Magistad, in Beijing.
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