Despite concerns about cooling consumer demand, September’s total retail sales climbed by 5.5% y/y in September 2023, accelerating from a 4.6% gain in the prior month and exceeding market estimates of 4.9%.
In a separate release on Wednesday, the industrial capacity utilization rate in China stood at 75.6 percent in the third quarter of 2023, unchanged from the same period a year earlier.
Meanwhile, China’s fixed-asset investment increased by 3.1% y/y to CNY 37.50 trillion in the first nine months of 2023, compared with market forecasts and figures in the prior period of 3.2% growth. Whereas, investment in real estate plunged by 9.1%.
China’s surveyed urban unemployment rate declined to 5.0% in September 2023 from 5.2% in August, marking the lowest jobless rate since November 2021. In the first three quarters of the year, the unemployment rate was 5.3%.