BEIJING—Annual profits at China’s industrial firms extended a double-digit decline in the first five months as softening demand squeezed margins, reinforcing hopes of more policy support to bolster a stuttering post-COVID economic recovery.
The 18.8 percent year-on-year slump in profits came on top of the 20.6 percent contraction in January-April, and added to evidence of an economy that was losing steam on many fronts in May including retail sales, exports and property investment as the youth jobless rate scaled a fresh high of 20.8 percent.
Last month alone, industrial earnings contracted by 12.6 percent from a year earlier, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released on Wednesday. Profits were down 18.2 percent in April….