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.

中国政府对失业潮汐极为敏感，因为这种情形可能导致社会动荡。不过，那些寄望于中国消费者市场的人们也应当关注该国的工资是否增长，还是停滞不前。当北京努力刺激国内需求以补偿全球需求萧条时，工资增长也将起到重要的作用。

“我们都在关注失业问题。但每个人都低估了一件事情，即由于工资增长缓慢而给消费行为带来的损害”。里昂证券经济学家艾里克·菲施维克认为。“如果只关注人民的失业问题，那你只不过抓住了冰山浮在水面上的那一部分”。

政府工作人员的工资仍在增长，但速度远不如前，而且基础薄弱。上周中国国家统计局发表了2009年一季度城市工人工资增长数据，该数字缓慢下滑至13.4%，去年同期则是18.3%。（该政府表示，这个数字并不覆盖民营企业和自由职业者的工资，而且统计依据为税前工资，其中包含养老金、医疗和住房津贴）

工人们税后工资的增长率下跌可能更为陡峭，因为企业已经削减了加班工资，菲施维克认为，这是城市工人收入的一大来源。

而且，由于这个国家轻薄的社会保障体系，因此中国的消费者们比西方人更喜欢储蓄，“引起家庭消费增长停滞的最大原因是家庭收入增长的停滞，特别是工资收入”，瑞银经济学家王涛（音）周一在一份报告中写道。中国的增长是一种资本集约和出口导向型的增长。企业，尤其是国有工业企业的盈利都被集中于固定资产投资，而不是分配给劳工，她表示。

投资行为加上政府对资源类价格的管制制造了廉价的资本，导致维持西方需求的商品生产走向繁荣。如今西方的需求已经崩溃，刺激国内需求是一个“中期挑战”，因为中国的国内消费传统上落后于其经济增长。其中主要原因是，中国的非农业就业和工资增长虽然很快，但落后于该国基于投资和出口的整体增长。

政府经济学家们也敦促中国把更多注意力集中到工资增长上来，而不是用百分之八的官方增长目标吸引头条。

“用来评判中国经济增长可持续性的一个更有意义的指数是工资在国民收入中所占比例”，财政部财政科学研究所副所长刘赏希（音）在周一的一篇报道中对新华社表示。“如果这个比率没有增长，人民将依旧贫穷，这样一来扩大消费就是一句空谈”。

领袖们也在关注这个问题。据国营的新华社报道，今年三月份的国家人民议会年度会议上，温家宝总理曾表示，政府打算增加工资在国民收入中所占的比例，特别是针对收入较低的城市和乡村居民。

尽管如此，阻止就业流失似乎是北京近期的首要大事。