China’s Jobless Rate Is 5.1%. Or Maybe It’s 4.1%.

China released two measures of unemployment that had a divergence of almost 1 percentage point, underscoring a lack of clarity on the job market in the world’s second-largest economy.

While the first Friday of the month in the U.S. typically sees investors, policy makers and members of the public eagerly awaiting the American employment report, no such equivalent exists for China. Today, one Chinese ministry said the registered urban jobless rate was 4.08 percent at the end of June, two days after another agency said the urban jobless rate was 5.05 percent, based on a 31-city survey.