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.

中國政府對失業潮汐極為敏感，因為這種情形可能導致社會動蕩。不過，那些寄望于中國消費者市場的人們也應當關注該國的工資是否增長，還是停滯不前。當北京努力刺激國內需求以補償全球需求蕭條時，工資增長也將起到重要的作用。

“我們都在關注失業問題。但每個人都低估了一件事情，即由于工資增長緩慢而給消費行為帶來的損害”。里昂證券經濟學家艾里克·菲施維克認為。“如果只關注人民的失業問題，那你只不過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，但速度遠不如前，而且基礎薄弱。上周中國國家統計局發表了2009年一季度城市工人工資增長數據，該數字緩慢下滑至13.4%，去年同期則是18.3%。（該政府表示，這個數字并不覆蓋民營企業和自由職業者的工資，而且統計依據為稅前工資，其中包含養老金、醫療和住房津貼）

工人們稅后工資的增長率下跌可能更為陡峭，因為企業已經削減了加班工資，菲施維克認為，這是城市工人收入的一大來源。

而且，由于這個國家輕薄的社會保障體系，因此中國的消費者們比西方人更喜歡儲蓄，“引起家庭消費增長停滯的最大原因是家庭收入增長的停滯，特別是工資收入”，瑞銀經濟學家王濤（音）周一在一份報告中寫道。中國的增長是一種資本集約和出口導向型的增長。企業，尤其是國有工業企業的盈利都被集中于固定資產投資，而不是分配給勞工，她表示。

投資行為加上政府對資源類價格的管制制造了廉價的資本，導致維持西方需求的商品生產走向繁榮。如今西方的需求已經崩潰，刺激國內需求是一個“中期挑戰”，因為中國的國內消費傳統上落后于其經濟增長。其中主要原因是，中國的非農業就業和工資增長雖然很快，但落后于該國基于投資和出口的整體增長。

政府經濟學家們也敦促中國把更多注意力集中到工資增長上來，而不是用百分之八的官方增長目標吸引頭條。

“用來評判中國經濟增長可持續性的一個更有意義的指數是工資在國民收入中所占比例”，財政部財政科學研究所副所長劉賞希（音）在周一的一篇報道中對新華社表示。“如果這個比率沒有增長，人民將依舊貧窮，這樣一來擴大消費就是一句空談”。

領袖們也在關注這個問題。據國營的新華社報道，今年三月份的國家人民議會年度會議上，溫家寶總理曾表示，政府打算增加工資在國民收入中所占的比例，特別是針對收入較低的城市和鄉村居民。

盡管如此，阻止就業流失似乎是北京近期的首要大事。