A series of measures were issued by the State Council on Tuesday to stimulate employment, including expanding taxation reduction and exemption policies to cover sole-proprietorship enterprises.

The decision was made at the council's weekly executive meeting, presided over by Premier Li Keqiang.

A news release after the meeting said, "Faced with growing pressure on employment this year, we have to launch more active employment policies and give full support to mass entrepreneurship and innovation."

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, 3.2 million new jobs were created in urban areas in the first three months of the year, a year-on-year fall of 240,000.

Mo Rong, director of the Institute of International Labor and Social Security under the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, has said this is partially due to the economic slowdown.

Tuesday's meeting decided that companies hiring people who have been jobless for more than six months will receive tax advantages. Previously, this policy only covered those who had been unemployed for more than a year. Taxation reduction and exemption policies will be expanded from benefiting small businesses initiated by graduates or registered jobless people to cover sole-proprietorship enterprises.

All companies that have paid unemployment insurance according to the law and that do not fire employees or seldom reduce staff numbers will be supported by the unemployment insurance fund.

Restrictions on the location of newly established companies have been eased and workers from rural areas are encouraged to return home and start their own businesses, including online ones.

Lyu Xuejing, a professor of social security at Capital University of Economics and Business, said the new policies are "powerful and considerate".

"Take the unemployment insurance fund policy as an example－it encourages all responsible companies to aim for fairness. More important, it will help prevent unemployment."

The government promised to help families in financial difficulties, such as those with all family members unemployed or living on subsistence allowances, saying that work will be found for at least one person in such cases.

The meeting also approved measures for managing the franchising of infrastructure and public utilities, allowing them to expand investment fields for private capital and to increase public products and services.

The measures allow domestic and foreign companies and other organizations to invest in, construct and operate infrastructure facilities and public utilities through transparent competition within specified terms and fields.