The Chinese government is keenly sensitive to the tide of unemployment, which could foment social unrest. But what those placing their hopes on the Chinese consumer market should also care about is whether wages grow or stagnate. That will play an important role in Beijing's efforts to stimulate domestic consumption to offset the global demand slump.

"We're all fixated on unemployment. One thing that everyone underestimates is the damage to spending done by wage growth slowing," says CLSA economist Eric Fishwick. "If you're only focusing on people losing their jobs, you're only catching the tip of the iceberg above water."

Government workers' pay is still growing, but not as fast as before, and from a low base. China posted a slowdown in urban workers' pay growth to 13.4% growth in the first quarter of 2009, compared with 18.3% during the same time last year, based on figures from the National Bureau of Statistics last week. (The government said that its figures do not cover wages for private companies and self-employed, and are calculated before tax and include pension, medical insurance and housing).

The fall in the growth of workers' take-home pay could even steeper, as companies cut back on overtime pay, a big source of income for urban workers, Fishwick said.

While Chinese consumers do save more than Westerners because of the country's flimsy social safety net, "the biggest reason underlying the lagging household consumption growth is lagging household income growth, especially wage income," UBS economist Tao Wang wrote in a report Monday. China's growth has been capital-intensive and exports-led. And corporate earnings, particularly from the state-owned industrial sector, have been funneled back into fixed asset investment, rather than distributed to labor, she said.

That investment, plus the government's price controls on inputs like resources, made capital cheap, leading to a boom in the production of goods that fed Western demand. Now that Western demand has collapsed, stimulating domestic demand is a "medium-term challenge" as China's domestic consumption has traditionally lagged behind its growth, mostly because Chinese non-farm employment and wage growth, while fast, have lagged behind the country's overall growth based on investment and exports.

Government economists, too, are urging China to pay more attention to wage growth than to the headline-grabbing official 8% growth target.

"A more meaningful index to judge the sustainability of China's economic growth would be the proportion of wages to national income," Liu Shangxi, deputy dean of the Research Institute for Fiscal Science at the Ministry of Finance, told Xinhua in a Monday report. "If this ratio did not rise, people would remain poor, and thus expanding consumption would be empty talk."

Leaders have been taking note. Premier Wen Jiabao told the annual session of the National People's Congress in March that the government aimed to boost the proportion of national income that goes to wages, particularly for low-income urban and rural residents, according to state-owned Xinhua News Agency.

Still, stemming the loss of jobs is likely to be Beijing's near-term top priority.

中國(guó)政府對(duì)失業(yè)潮汐極為敏感，因?yàn)檫@種情形可能導(dǎo)致社會(huì)動(dòng)蕩。不過(guò)，那些寄望于中國(guó)消費(fèi)者市場(chǎng)的人們也應(yīng)當(dāng)關(guān)注該國(guó)的工資是否增長(zhǎng)，還是停滯不前。當(dāng)北京努力刺激國(guó)內(nèi)需求以補(bǔ)償全球需求蕭條時(shí)，工資增長(zhǎng)也將起到重要的作用。

“我們都在關(guān)注失業(yè)問題。但每個(gè)人都低估了一件事情，即由于工資增長(zhǎng)緩慢而給消費(fèi)行為帶來(lái)的損害”。里昂證券經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家艾里克·菲施維克認(rèn)為。“如果只關(guān)注人民的失業(yè)問題，那你只不過(guò)抓住了冰山浮在水面上的那一部分”。

政府工作人員的工資仍在增長(zhǎng)，但速度遠(yuǎn)不如前，而且基礎(chǔ)薄弱。上周中國(guó)國(guó)家統(tǒng)計(jì)局發(fā)表了2009年一季度城市工人工資增長(zhǎng)數(shù)據(jù)，該數(shù)字緩慢下滑至13.4%，去年同期則是18.3%。（該政府表示，這個(gè)數(shù)字并不覆蓋民營(yíng)企業(yè)和自由職業(yè)者的工資，而且統(tǒng)計(jì)依據(jù)為稅前工資，其中包含養(yǎng)老金、醫(yī)療和住房津貼）

工人們稅后工資的增長(zhǎng)率下跌可能更為陡峭，因?yàn)槠髽I(yè)已經(jīng)削減了加班工資，菲施維克認(rèn)為，這是城市工人收入的一大來(lái)源。

而且，由于這個(gè)國(guó)家輕薄的社會(huì)保障體系，因此中國(guó)的消費(fèi)者們比西方人更喜歡儲(chǔ)蓄，“引起家庭消費(fèi)增長(zhǎng)停滯的最大原因是家庭收入增長(zhǎng)的停滯，特別是工資收入”，瑞銀經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家王濤（音）周一在一份報(bào)告中寫道。中國(guó)的增長(zhǎng)是一種資本集約和出口導(dǎo)向型的增長(zhǎng)。企業(yè)，尤其是國(guó)有工業(yè)企業(yè)的盈利都被集中于固定資產(chǎn)投資，而不是分配給勞工，她表示。

投資行為加上政府對(duì)資源類價(jià)格的管制制造了廉價(jià)的資本，導(dǎo)致維持西方需求的商品生產(chǎn)走向繁榮。如今西方的需求已經(jīng)崩潰，刺激國(guó)內(nèi)需求是一個(gè)“中期挑戰(zhàn)”，因?yàn)橹袊?guó)的國(guó)內(nèi)消費(fèi)傳統(tǒng)上落后于其經(jīng)濟(jì)增長(zhǎng)。其中主要原因是，中國(guó)的非農(nóng)業(yè)就業(yè)和工資增長(zhǎng)雖然很快，但落后于該國(guó)基于投資和出口的整體增長(zhǎng)。

政府經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家們也敦促中國(guó)把更多注意力集中到工資增長(zhǎng)上來(lái)，而不是用百分之八的官方增長(zhǎng)目標(biāo)吸引頭條。

“用來(lái)評(píng)判中國(guó)經(jīng)濟(jì)增長(zhǎng)可持續(xù)性的一個(gè)更有意義的指數(shù)是工資在國(guó)民收入中所占比例”，財(cái)政部財(cái)政科學(xué)研究所副所長(zhǎng)劉賞希（音）在周一的一篇報(bào)道中對(duì)新華社表示。“如果這個(gè)比率沒有增長(zhǎng)，人民將依舊貧窮，這樣一來(lái)擴(kuò)大消費(fèi)就是一句空談”。

領(lǐng)袖們也在關(guān)注這個(gè)問題。據(jù)國(guó)營(yíng)的新華社報(bào)道，今年三月份的國(guó)家人民議會(huì)年度會(huì)議上，溫家寶總理曾表示，政府打算增加工資在國(guó)民收入中所占的比例，特別是針對(duì)收入較低的城市和鄉(xiāng)村居民。

盡管如此，阻止就業(yè)流失似乎是北京近期的首要大事。