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China’s major economic indicators showed fresh signs of recovery in June, official data released Friday showed, after Beijing eased strict COVID-19 restrictions that kept millions of people confined to their homes and shut factories.
Retail sales, a key gauge of China’s consumption, rose 3.1% from a year earlier in June, rebounding from a 6.7% decline in May, the National Bureau of Statistics said. Economists polled expected China’s retail sales to have fallen 1.0%.
Industrial output rose 3.9%, accelerating from 0.7% growth in May. But the result was lower than the 4.4% increase anticipated by economists polled by The Wall Street Journal.
Fixed-asset investment rose 6.1% in the first half of the year, down slightly from the 6.2% increase in the January-May period but higher than the 6.0% growth expected by economists surveyed.
China’s urban surveyed unemployment rate fell to 5.5% in June from 5.9% in May, the statistics bureau said. Beijing earlier this year set a target of capping the country’s urban jobless rate at 5.5% for 2022.
