The global economic crisis has led to the unemployment of far more migrant workers in China than the 20 million estimated earlier, said a government survey published on Wednesday.
The poll carried out by the National Bureau of Statistics estimated that of the 70 million migrant workers who returned home for the Chinese New Year holiday in January, some 25 million were without jobs.
It did not canvass the other 70 million migrants who did not return to their home towns for the holiday, leaving open the possibility the real figure could be even higher.
Migrant workers' sweat and toil far from home has helped fuel China's spectacular economic rise, but the closure of thousands of factories amid the world economic troubles has thrown masses of them out of work.
The government has flagged the growing numbers of jobless migrants as a social stability risk and earlier this month announced a range of new spending plans aimed at cushioning the blow for them and their families.
The survey polled migrant workers from more than 68,000 families in 7,100 villages during the months preceding the Chinese New Year holiday.
China had announced in February that about 20 million rural migrants were jobless due to the global slowdown, a three-fold increase from numbers released by the government in January.
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