After over a month in lockdown, Zeng Jialin could finally return to the Shanghai auto parts factory where he had worked. He was about to be released from a quarantine facility, having recovered from Covid, and was desperate to make up for the many days of wages he had missed.
在被封了一个多月后，曾家林终于可以回到他以前工作的那家上海汽车配件厂了。他在感染新冠病毒后康复，即将获许离开隔离设施。因为隔离他失去了多日工资，如今正急于弥补损失。
But on Tuesday, the day he was supposed to be released, someone in the crowded isolation facility tested positive again. Mr. Zeng, 48, was ordered to wait 14 more days.
但就在他本该从隔离设施出来的周二，那家拥挤的方舱医院有人再次检测出阳性。48岁的曾先生被要求再隔离14天。
“I have three kids, in college, middle school and elementary school. The pressure is huge,” he said in a phone interview from the facility. Much of his $30 daily wage had supported them. “I also owe money to the bank, so I’m very anxious.”
“我有三个小孩，读大学、初二、小学，所以压力也大，”他从隔离设施接受电话采访时说。他每天200元的工资大部分用来养活他们。“加上欠了30万银行贷款，很着急。”
As China battles its worst coronavirus outbreaks, its uncompromising determination to eliminate infections has left millions unable to work. Stringent lockdowns, hitting city after city, have forced factories and businesses to shut, sometimes for weeks, including in some of the country’s most important economic centers.
随着中国与其最严重的一轮新冠疫情作斗争，政府清除病毒感染的坚定决心已让数百万人无法工作。一座接一座的城市采取的严格封控措施，迫使工厂和企业停摆，时间有时长达数周，甚至包括位于中国一些最重要经济中心的工厂和企业。
Two groups have been especially hard-hit: migrant workers — the roughly 280 million laborers who travel from rural areas to cities to work in sectors such as manufacturing and construction — and recent college graduates. Nearly 11 million college students, a record, are expected to graduate this year.
有两个群体受到的打击尤其严重，一个是在制造和建筑等行业工作的约2.8亿名农民工，另一个是应届大学毕业生。预计今年将有创纪录的1100万名大学生毕业。
China’s campaign against the virus has rippled economically around the world, snarling global supply chains and dampening imports. But employment woes may particularly concern Chinese leaders, who have long derived much of their political authority from their promise of economic prosperity. As lockdowns have hampered people’s ability to pay rent and buy food, many have grown increasingly frustrated with the authorities’ zero-Covid policies. Sometimes, dissatisfaction has erupted into rare public protests.
中国抗疫运动的影响已波及世界各地的经济，扰乱了全球供应链，抑制了进口。但就业问题也许尤其让中国领导人担忧，长期以来，中国领导人的大部分政治权威建立在他们对经济繁荣的承诺上。由于封控妨碍了人们支付房租和购买食物的能力，许多人对当局的清零政策越来越感到厌烦。不满情绪有时已爆发为罕见的公开抗议。
China’s No. 2 official, Li Keqiang, announced recently that the government would take the unusual step of distributing living allowances to unemployed migrant workers and subsidize companies that hired young people.
中国的二号领导人李克强最近宣布，政府将采取非常措施，对失业的农民工发放生活补助，为雇佣年轻人的企业提供补贴。
“The new round of Covid flare-ups has hit employment quite hard,” Mr. Li said on April 27. “We must do whatever possible to boost job creation, especially for key groups such as college graduates.”
“新一轮疫情对就业造成了相当大的冲击，”李克强4月27日说。“我们必须尽一切可能促进就业，尤其是针对大学毕业生等重点群体。”
It is difficult to judge the true scale of the problem. Officially, urban unemployment, the government’s primary indicator, grew just 0.3 percent between February and March, even as lockdowns paralyzed the economic engines of Shenzhen and Shanghai.
外界很难判断就业问题的严重程度。官方数据显示，政府的主要指标——城镇调查失业率3月份比2月份仅提高了0.3个百分点，尽管封控措施已让深圳和上海这两个经济引擎瘫痪。
But the official unemployment figures are widely considered an undercount. They do not capture many migrant workers, and they also only count people as unemployed if they are able to start working within two weeks. That would exclude people under extended lockdowns or the growing numbers of young people deferring job searches.
但官方的失业数字被普遍认为遭到低估。官方失业率没有把许多农民工包括进来，而且只把那些能够在两周内开始工作的人算作失业者。这就排除了长期处于封控状态下的人，或越来越多推迟找工作的年轻人。
The government’s new support measures suggest that the problem is more serious than officials have let on, said Stephen Roach, the former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, now a senior fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University. The government had also increased unemployment payments for migrant workers before the global financial crisis in 2008.
政府出台的就业扶持措施表明，问题比官员们透露的要严重，曾任摩根士丹利亚洲区主席，现任耶鲁大学杰克逊全球事务研究所高级研究员的斯蒂芬·罗奇说。在2008年全球金融危机之前，中国政府也曾提高了向农民工发放的失业补助。
“The announcement itself is a hint that there is potentially something a lot bigger going on in this contingent piece of the labor market,” Mr. Roach said. “This could well be China’s biggest challenge since the ’08-09 period.”
“国务院的声明本身就是一个暗示，表明劳动力市场的这个临时工部分有出现某种更大情况的可能，”罗奇说。“这很可能是中国自2008-09年以来面临的最大挑战。”
China’s migrant workers, though they form the backbone of the country’s economy, have always eked out precarious livelihoods. They earn meager wages and have almost no labor protections or benefits, circumstances made worse by the pandemic.
虽然农民工是中国经济的支柱，但他们一直勉强维持着不稳定的生计。工资微薄，几乎没有劳动保护或福利，而且在新冠病毒大流行中，他们的情况变得更糟了。
Workers often live in company dormitories or cheap temporary accommodations, but when factories shut down, many could no longer afford rent or became trapped on their work sites, according to Chinese news reports and social media posts. Some slept under bridges or in phone booths.
农民工通常住在公司的宿舍或简陋的临时住所。据中国的新闻报道和社交媒体帖子，工厂停工后，许多人付不起房租，或被困在单位。有些人睡在立交桥下或住在电话亭里。
Yang Jiwei, a 21-year-old from Anhui Province, worked as a waiter in Shanghai when the lockdown began. His residence, shared with four other people, had no kitchen supplies, so they could not cook the few packages of vegetables and meat that local officials had provided. He had been eating a dwindling supply of instant noodles.
上海封城开始时，来自安徽、21岁的杨继伟在一家餐馆当服务员。他和另外四个人住在一起，住的地方没有厨房，所以他们无法把政府提供的有限几包蔬菜和肉食做熟。他一直在吃泡面，而泡面的存货已越来越少。
“I get up, eat, and then I go back to bed,” Mr. Yang said. “Other than food, I can’t think about anything else.”
“起来吃饭，吃了就躺床上睡觉，”杨先生说。“除了能吃上饭啥也想不了。”
Delivery workers, some of the only laborers allowed to continue working, had to choose between forgoing income or risking being locked out of their homes. Others took high-risk jobs building or staffing quarantine facilities, only to become infected themselves.
快递员是仍被允许继续工作的少数工种之一，他们不得不在放弃收入与冒下不能回住处的风险之间做出选择。有些人选择了修建隔离设施或在隔离设施打工的高风险岗位，结果自己却感染了病毒。
Officials in Shanghai have acknowledged that the number of homeless people has increased during the lockdown. Local and central authorities have pledged support, but many questions remain.
上海官员已承认，无家可归者的人数封控期间有所增加。地方当局和中央政府都已承诺提供支持，但仍有许多问题。
When Mr. Li, the premier, announced the expanded unemployment subsidies, he did not specify how much money would be provided. (Xinhua, the state news agency, said that the government this year has allocated about $9.3 billion in unemployment subsidies.) Nor is it clear how workers will receive the money. Though China has unemployment insurance, many migrant workers are ineligible or do not know how to claim it.
李克强宣布扩大失业补贴时，并没有具体说明政府将提供多少钱。（中国官方通讯社新华社报道称，政府今年为失业补贴提供了约617亿元的拨款。）也没有说明工人们将如何拿到补贴。虽然中国有失业保险，但许多农民工不符合参保条件或不知道如何申请。
Mr. Zeng, the auto parts factory worker, said he was not aware of Mr. Li’s remarks and had never heard of unemployment insurance. He hoped to be employed after being released from quarantine but knew that he might have to return home to Guizhou Province instead.
汽车配件厂工人曾先生说，他不知道李克强说的话，也从未听说过失业保险。他希望解除隔离后能找到工作，但他知道，他也许不得不回到贵州老家。
“I’ll have to see if the factory reopens. If so, I’ll go there,” he said. “If not, there’s nothing I can do.”
“看公司那边能不能开工。开工的话就先去公司做。”他说。“不行的话就没办法嘛。”
Still, any political risk to Beijing is likely to remain small, said Aidan Chau, a researcher at China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based advocacy group. The migrant workers’ pain, while acute, will likely ebb as individual lockdowns ease. The government has also promised to invest in infrastructure projects to provide more construction jobs. And migrant workers in general have little political power and can be silenced by local officials if they complain.
尽管如此，中国政府不太可能遇到任何大的政治风险，香港维权组织中国劳工通讯的研究员艾丹·周说。农民工的痛苦虽然严重，但可能将随着个别城市封控措施的缓解而减轻。政府还承诺投资基础设施项目，这将提供更多的建筑工作岗位。农民工一般没有多少政治权力，如果他们抱怨的话，地方官员能让他们噤声。
The more intractable problem may be white-collar employment. Resistance in Shanghai to the lockdown has been fueled in part by its large population of well-educated residents, who are more accustomed to speaking out even in the country’s highly controlled environment. In late March, residents of one middle-class community gathered outside and chanted, “We want to eat, we want to work!”
更棘手的可能是白领就业问题。在一定程度上，上海封城遭到抵制是因为那里住着大批受过高等教育的居民，即使在中国高度控制的环境中，他们也更习惯于发表意见。3月下旬，一个中产阶级社区的居民曾聚集在户外抗议并高呼，“我们要吃饭！我们要上班！”
Of particular concern are the country’s ballooning ranks of college graduates. Policymakers have worried for years about how to ensure an adequate supply of jobs for them. But the shortage has become especially dire this year.
尤其令人担忧的是中国不断壮大的大学毕业生队伍。多年来，政策制定者们一直在担心如何确保为他们提供足够的就业机会。但今年的就业缺口尤为严重。
At the same time as lockdowns have battered small and medium enterprises, the government has also embarked on a wide-ranging regulatory crackdown on sectors including technology, real estate and education — once highly desirable industries for young people. Mass layoffs have ensued.
在中小企业受到封控打击的同时，政府也在着手对曾是年轻人非常向往的科技、房地产和教育等行业进行广泛的监管打击。这些行业已经在经历大规模裁员。
There were just 0.71 jobs available for every recently graduated job applicant in the first quarter of this year, the lowest figure since data became available in 2019, according to a report by Renmin University in Beijing and Zhaopin, a jobs website.
据北京人民大学和智联招聘发布的一份报告，今年第一季度，每名应届毕业生只有0.71个工作机会，这是自2019年有数据以来最低的。
“For a country that is always fixated on social stability, to have your young people struggling for employment as they get out of college is not exactly what a system like that would like,” said Mr. Roach, at Yale.
“对一个总是最关心社会稳定的国家来说，让年轻人刚毕业就面临就业上的重重困难，恰恰不是这个制度所希望看到的，”耶鲁大学的罗奇说。
Mr. Li’s promises to aid college graduates last month included plans to help them start their own businesses and to subsidize companies that offered internships.
李克强上个月承诺为大学毕业生提供帮助，包括帮助他们创业，对向他们提供实习机会的公司给予补贴。
Even internships are hard to come by. To increase his odds of landing one this semester, Xu Yixing, a vocational college student in Shanghai, had offered to work unpaid but was still turned down by his top choices. A pharmaceutical company eventually hired him but let him go when Shanghai locked down.
就连实习的机会也难以获得。为了增加本学期找到实习机会的可能性，上海一名职业学院的学生徐一星（音）表示愿意无偿工作，但仍被他最想去的地方拒绝了。一家制药公司最终聘用了他，但上海封控后，他被告知公司不支持线上实习。
Mr. Xu, who studies computer applications and advertising, said he was not overly anxious about the competition. It was the pandemic that worried him.
徐先生读的是计算机应用和广告专业，他说，他并不太担心就业竞争。他更担心的是疫情。
“With the epidemic, that just depends on fate,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how hard you work.”
“疫情就是看天了，”他说。“努力没有用。”