National Bureau of Statistics spokesman Fu Linghui on Tuesday said the release of the data would be suspended from August as the way the jobless rate was calculated needed to be improved to reflect the changing society.

He said there were 65 million students in the 16-24 age group and it was questionable whether they should be included in the unemployment figures before they graduated.

On the face of it, this seems quite reasonable.

You would expect that youth unemployment would capture the young people in the labour force, i.e. the number of people actually looking to work.