An official gauge of unemployment in Chinese cities showed a slight fall to 5.9% in May, a tick down from April’s 6.0% figure and a further improvement after the national surveyed unemployment rate surged to a record 6.2% in February. Value-added industrial production, a measure of output in manufacturing, mining and utilities, grew 4.4% in May from a year earlier, following a 3.9% year-over-year expansion in April, the National Bureau of Statistics said Monday. Retail sales and fixed-asset investment, though still coming in weaker than the same period a year earlier, continued to show strong signs of improvement. Retail sales slipped 2.8% in May from a year earlier, official data showed, much narrower than April’s 7.5% year-over-year decline. The improved reading was fueled by a 3.5% increase in auto sales from a year earlier, the best month by this metric in more than two years. Home sales in China […]