Crisis hits 2/3s of Beijing residents

Some newspaper articles are pretty pointless. This one is a good example of one of those articles.

We know there is a global recession, we know jobs are being lost and we know this will impact all sectors of society.

The headline in the People's Daily Online that "69.6% of Beijing residents affected by financial crisis" is just stating the obvious. In fact I am surprised the figure is so low. What do the other 30% do?

It turns out they are teachers. Teachers just need to wait until falling tax revenues leads to cuts to the education budget and the laying off (or hiring freeze) for teachers. That is probably a year or so away. It is just a matter of time.

69.6% of Beijing residents affected by financial crisis [Peoples Daily Online]

69.6% of the respondents said they were "directly affected" by the financial crisis, according to a specialized survey of over 2,000 respondents in 18 districts and counties in Beijing released by the Beijing Social Facts and Public Opinion Survey Center.

Those who believed that they were "severely" affected account for 15.7% of respondents. Of which, the percentage of respondents who chose this option was highest in the 41 to 50-year-old age group, reaching 22.2%.

Moreover, the survey shows that those who were least affected by the financial crisis were teachers, and those who were affected the most were "self-employed/freelance workers."

Among the 186 "self-employed/freelance workers" surveyed, 22.6% believed the crisis had a "major impact" on their lives.

Among households with incomes less than 10,000 yuan per month, the lower the income of the household the greater the impact they felt from the financial crisis.

Over 70% of households with incomes below 2,000 yuan per month believed that they were affected by the crisis.

Among the 55 households with incomes between 9,000 to 9,999 yuan per month, 32 households felt that they were affected by the financial crisis; they were the least affected group of all the households surveyed.

The survey also shows, in 2008, the salaries of 54.9% of the respondents remained basically unchanged, while over 26% experienced a drop in income.

Salaries of civil servants were the most stable, with 50 civil servants surveyed and 42 of them saying that their salaries basically did not change.

Meanwhile the "management in enterprises and public institutions" group shows the largest elasticity; of 250 respondents, 64 were given raises and 65 had their salaries cut.

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