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HONG KONG —Wang Junping worked as a farmer in his native Hebei Province and as a coal miner in Inner Mongolia. But on a recent afternoon, Mr. Wang, 49, smartly dressed in a suit jacket, was awaiting lessons at an employment agency on the proper way to use a broom and mop to clean Beijing’s sprawling subway system.
香港——王君平曾在河北老家当过农民，也在内蒙古干过矿工。但在最近的一个下午，49岁的他穿着体面的西装，在一个职业介绍所等待上课，他将学习如何使用扫帚和拖把来清洁北京庞大的地铁系统。
A high school graduate, Mr. Wang quit his job at a mine last year after his pay was cut in half. Still, he decided against the cleaning job because the salary was too low, at around $320 a month.
去年，高中毕业的王君平在工资减半后辞去了矿场的工作。不过，因为工资实在太低——月薪大约为320美元（约合2000元人民币）——他决定不当清洁工。
“Beijing is the capital city and the window for cultural and political exchange,” Mr. Wang said. “I believed it would be easy to find jobs. But actually it’s not that easy.”
“北京是首都，是文化和政治交流的窗口，”王君平说。“我以为找工作会很容易。但其实没那么容易。”
China has a job market mismatch.
中国的就业市场存在技能与需求不匹配的现象。
Agriculture jobs have been declining for years, the result of urbanization and the country’s continuing economic transformation. And China’s huge manufacturing sector is showing new signs of stress, as some companies struggle with rising debt and rampant overcapacity.
数年来，由于城市化和中国持续的经济改革，农业领域的工作一直在减少。此外，中国庞大的制造业也表现出了新的压力迹象，有些企业在债务增加和产能极度过剩的情况下苦苦挣扎。
China’s services business, which includes industries like logistics, retail, information technology and sanitation, is booming, driving job creation across the entire economy. Around 300 million people now work in services in China, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the world’s largest work force.
包括物流、零售、信息技术和环境卫生等行业在内的中国服务业正在蓬勃发展，推动了整个经济体中就业机会的创造。目前共有大约3亿人在中国的服务领域工作，在世界上最大的劳动力大军中占将近40%。
But workers are not easily making the switch. Unskilled or semiskilled workers like Mr. Wang can be a bit choosier now as growth of the pool of migrant workers slows. At the same time, soaring university enrollment means new graduates often struggle to find the high-paying white-collar jobs they were expecting.
但是，工人适应这种转变并不容易。目前，随着外来务工人员数量的增速变缓，像王君平这种没有技能或技能不足的人可以更挑剔一些。与此同时，大学入学人数的飙升意味着应届毕业生往往难以找到他们所期望的高薪白领工作。
The job market — and its lopsided pockets of supply and demand — presents a critical test for policy makers. For more than a decade, China’s urban work force swelled and incomes rose in the double digits, matching or exceeding the heady economic growth rates in those years.
就业市场及其供需失衡现象给决策者带来了严峻考验。十年多来，中国的城市劳动力人口大量增加，收入呈两位数增长，与这些年飞速的经济增长相匹配或超过了经济增长率。
Now, the nation’s economic outlook is slowing. Gross domestic product rose 7 percent in the first quarter, which represents the slowest quarterly growth since early 2009.
如今，中国经济的增长势头正在减弱。第一季度的国内生产总值增长了7%，这是自2009年初以来经济增速最慢的一个季度。
“We’re in this weird position where the Communist Party leadership seems completely comfortable with the idea that every year G.D.P. growth, wage growth — everything in the economy — is going to be growing a little bit more slowly,” said Andy Rothman, an investment strategist at Matthews Asia in San Francisco.
旧金山铭基亚洲(Matthews Asia)的投资策略师安迪·罗思曼(Andy Rothman)表示，“我们处在一个奇怪的位置，共产党领导层似乎满不介意经济中的方方面面，包括每年的GDP增长率和工资增长率，都将以越来越慢的速度增长。”
The leadership in Beijing has repeatedly signaled that slower growth is acceptable as long as the job market holds up. While China has moved in recent months to support the economy, cutting interest rates twice and freeing banks to lend more twice, some analysts say a still-sound job market is the reason it has not adopted a more aggressive approach.
北京的领导层曾反复表示，只要就业市场形势稳定，增长放缓是可以接受的。尽管最近几个月，中国采取了一些扶持经济的措施——两次降息、两次放松银行借贷限制——一些分析人士称，仍然稳定的就业市场是政府还没有采取更加激进的措施的原因。
“The Chinese are literally doing the least amount necessary in order to just maintain an air of stability,” said Leland Miller, president of China Beige Book International, which conducts surveys of thousands of businesses across the country. “It’s the opposite of what’s happening in Japan — shock and awe — or in Europe.”
“其实，为了维护稳定氛围，中国只采取了最基本的必要举措，”中国褐皮书国际公司(China Beige Book International)总裁勒兰德·米勒(Leland Miller)说。该公司对全国各地的数千家企业进行了调查。“这与日本或欧洲大刀阔斧的情况正好相反。”
China’s premier, Li Keqiang, recently sought to play down the importance of the G.D.P. growth target, saying instead that he preferred to focus on whether the economy was expanding in a way that created new jobs. And so far, it appears to be doing that. China added 13.2 million new urban jobs last year, surpassing Mr. Li’s official target of 10 million such jobs.
最近，中国国务院总理李克强试图淡化GDP增长目标的重要性，表示他更愿意关注经济是否在以创造新就业机会的方式增长。目前为止，它似乎是在这样做着。去年，中国城镇新增就业岗位1320万个，超出了李克强所设定的1000万的官方目标。
But Mr. Li’s jobs target is a gross figure. It does not factor in jobs that were eliminated. And more important, income growth is decelerating, down from double digits to around 8 percent last year. Any resulting pullback in consumer spending would have a direct impact on the service sector’s ability to continue to create jobs.
不过，李克强的就业目标是个总数，并不包括被淘汰的工作岗位。更重要的是，收入的增长势头正在放缓，从两位数下降到了去年的8%左右。随之而来的任何消费支出的减少，都将对服务业继续创造就业机会的能力造成直接影响。
“If people including migrant workers were used to salary increases of 15 to 20 percent every year, and all of a sudden they are down to 10 or even 8 percent, how will they respond?” said Jurgen F. Conrad, head of the China economics unit at the Asian Development Bank in Beijing.
北京亚洲开发银行(Asian Development Bank)中国经济部门的负责人尤尔根·F·康拉德(Jurgen F. Conrad)说，“如果包括外来务工人员在内的人们已经习惯了工资每年增加15%到20%，然后这个比率突然降到了10%乃至8%，他们会作何反应？”
“Risks is not the right term, but there are some imponderables,” Mr. Conrad added. “If you look at the magnitude of the structural changes going on, it’s not always easy to predict the outcomes, including for employment.”
“风险并非正确的说法，但这里有一些无法估量的东西，”康拉德补充道。“如果看看正在发生的结构变化的幅度，就知道预测结局并不总是件容易的事，包括对就业也是如此。”
Data on China’s job market lack the frequency and general quality of figures in more developed markets. For example, the official urban unemployment rate, published quarterly, has ranged from 4 to 4.3 percent for the last decade, a level of stability that economists say is hard to achieve
关于中国就业市场的数据，缺乏更发达市场的数据的那种频度和普遍质量。例如，过去10年，按季度发布的官方城镇失业率的范围在4%到4.3%。经济学家表示，这种稳定程度很难实现。
Instead, shifts in the health of the job market tend to show up more clearly in wage and recruiting trends. Here, two overarching factors have emerged in recent years: The pool of migrant workers is tightening as the returns from urbanization diminish, while a shortage of white-collar jobs for new college graduates points to a skills mismatch.
于是，就业市场状态的好坏往往在工资和招聘趋势方面表现得更加清晰。近年来，这里出现了两个非常重要的因素：由于城市化的回报降低，外来务工人员的人数也在缩减，而一些应届大学毕业生找不到白领工作的现象也表明了技能与需求的不匹配。
“It is difficult to hire workers, even if the economy is not doing that well,” said Juble Lu, a manager at the Zhihua Kitchen Cabinet Accessories Factory in the southern city of Guangzhou.
中国南方城市广州的志华橱柜有限公司的经理朱布·卢(Juble Lu)说，“即使经济形势欠佳，工人也很难雇。”
Factories like Ms. Lu’s rely largely on China’s migrant work force of 175 million. But this pool of laborers is growing today at about only 1 percent a year, much slower than the broader economy. That tighter market tends to give bargaining power to workers and push up wages. For skilled workers, Ms. Lu said, wages could rise by as much as 20 percent a year. “Workers still have their many demands,” she said.
像这样的工厂，在很大程度上都依赖中国1.75亿的外来务工人员。但是，劳力大军的总人数如今在以每年大约只有1%的速度增加，比整体经济慢了许多。这种收紧的市场往往会赋予工人议价的权力并抬升工资。朱布·卢说，对于熟练工人，工资每年的涨幅可达20%。她说，“工人们仍然有许多要求。”
The tighter migrant labor pool is symptomatic of the broader growth slowdown. For more than a decade, China has been able to increase the size of its economy by several percentage points a year simply by people moving from farms to factories, where their productivity in economic terms soared. Today, that trend is slowing as the economic returns from urbanization become relatively smaller.
外来务工人员的减少，表明了经济增速的进一步放缓。十多年来，在中国经济规模的增长中，每年都有几个百分点的推动力纯粹来自人们从农田到工厂的转移；在这里，他们的经济生产力出现飙升。现在，由于城市化所带来的经济收益相对减少，这个趋势也在放缓。
“A lot of the migration that is going to happen has already happened, and the people left in rural population who are not part of the migrant labor pool are either too young or too old, or have other barriers keeping them from migrating,” said Andrew Batson, the China research director at Gavekal Dragonomics, based in Beijing.
设在北京的龙洲经讯(GaveKal Dragonomics)的研究员白安儒(Andrew Batson)说，“有可能发生的人口迁移中大部分已经发生了，其他不属于外来务工人员的农村人口，年纪要么太小要么太大，或者还有其他因素不让他们迁移。”
Income trends are further suppressing potential migration to the cities. In recent years, rural incomes have been rising faster than urban ones. “You can’t make the same on the farm as in the city, but at the margin things are getting better,” Mr. Batson said. “What you have to pay them to leave the homestead is rising.”
收入趋势正在进一步抑制人口向城市的迁移。近年来，农民收入的增长快于城市。“农村挣的钱虽然比不上城市，但从差距来看，情况正在好转，”白安儒说。“为了让他们离开家园，你必须付出更高的代价。”
Contrast this with the situation at the other end of the job market. Having prevailed in the country’s ultracompetitive entrance examinations, new university graduates, usually from one-child families, have high expectations as they seek their first jobs.
把它和就业市场上另一端的情况做个对比。由于在中国竞争格外激烈的大学入学考试中取得胜利，通常来自独生子女家庭的应届大学毕业生在寻找第一份工作时，往往有着很高的期待。
But the realities of the market quickly set in. At nearly seven million a year, China today produces twice as many university graduates as it did 10 years ago. The supply appears to be outpacing the demand from prospective employers. According to official data, about 88 jobs requiring graduate-level education are available for every 100 such job seekers. For those with only vocational high school qualifications, the ratio climbs to 104 jobs for every 100 candidates.
但是，市场的现实很快便开始显现。如今，中国每年会新增近700万名大学毕业生，几乎是10年前的两倍。这个人数似乎超过了市场的相关潜在需求。根据官方数据，对于每100个寻找要求大学毕业水平的工作的人，只有88个这样的就业机会。而对于那些只有职业高中资格的人，比例则会升至每100人享有104个就业机会。
“The reality is that a taxi driver in Beijing, unskilled, can make more money than a new university graduate,” at least initially, said Mr. Conrad of the Asian Development Bank. “This is of course shocking for these young people.”
“现实情况就是，北京一个没有任何技能的出租车司机比应届大学毕业生挣的钱都多，”至少刚开始是这样。亚洲开发银行的康拉德说。“对于这些年轻人，这个事实当然令人震惊。”
China’s new graduates have traditionally shied away from working in factories, seeing this as a sign of lower status. But, perhaps because of the slowdown, there are signs this is changing. Dai Chaoyang, general manager of Shanghai Kadun Power Tools, says his company, which manufactures power drills, has started hiring new graduates in management trainee positions.
中国的应届毕业生一直回避在工厂工作，认为这是地位低下的象征。不过，或许因为经济增速放缓，有迹象表明情况正在改变。制造电钻的上海卡顿电动工具公司的总经理戴朝阳（音）说，他的公司现在已经开始为管理培训生岗位招聘应届大学毕业生了。
“They do not mind working in a factory environment,” Mr. Dai said, “as long as they are not working on the assembly line.”
“他们不介意在工厂工作，”戴朝阳说，“只要不让他们在流水线上工作就好。”
