China to continue to prioritize employment promotion

China will continue to prioritize employment promotion work this year by releasing more preferential policies, optimizing job services and tightening supervision on labor relations, said a senior official.

Last year, the domestic job market has shown a forecast-beating performance, with 12.44 million people successfully landing jobs in urban areas and the average surveyed unemployment rate staying around 5.2 percent in urban areas.

"China is a developing country with a large population. Employment is closely related to the basic livelihood of every family and the nation's social and economic development," said Wang Xiaoping, minister of the human resources and social security at a news conference in Beijing on Saturday.

She said that job markets saw a good opening this year and employers in industries including artificial intelligence, big data, healthcare and tourism are in an increasing demand for talent.

She said that these recruitment demands are strong evidence of China's recovering economy, which has also brought about new opportunities to the average person in the course of industries upgrading.

"We are confident in keeping employment work with continuous stability thanks to the nation's developing and bettering economy, while we have to make more efforts for the growing working population and the structural imbalance existing in the job market," she said.

According to her, the ministry will better the policy support on insurance and loans to employers this year, to let them retain or create more working positions. The ministry will also put more efforts forwards to encourage employers in new industries — such as the digital economy and green economy, to create more jobs, and give stronger loan or tax support to entrepreneurs in order to let them better operate start-ups.

She said that the ministry will optimize job services to flexible workers and organize working skill trainings to relieve the structural imbalance of the job market.

"We've seen over 18 million people, each year, attend vocational skills training organized by government departments in recent years. We will continue to focus on the working skills training in sectors with larger labor force demand including manufacturing, services and nursing works for the elderly,

"Optimizing job services is of importance to employment promotion work. From earlier this year, we've organized 32,000 job fairs nationwide — up 20 percent year-on-year — and helped transfer 880,000 workers from their hometowns to workplaces through chartered buses, trains or flights," she said.

She said that the ministry will also enhance job services to some key groups such as college graduates — whose population is expected to reach 11.79 million this year — demobilized military staff members and people with disabilities.

The ministry will cooperate with other government departments to tighten supervision on the job market to secure a harmonious and friendly working environment, and prevent improper or illegal behaviors, for example, payment arrears to migrant workers, to better protect people's working rights, she added.