According to news from the National Job-Training Working Conference held on February 24, the Ministry of Labor and Social Security will strengthen the training of State-owned enterprise layoffs for their re-employment, ensuring that the people re-employed this year will outnumber newly added layoffs., and urban registered unemployment rate will be kept within 3.5 percent.

A total of 5.13 million people reportedly participated in the training for re-employment, and 3.23 million of them found new jobs last year. The post-training re-employment rate is 63 percent, the urban registered unemployment rate is 3.1 percent. The situation regarding the re-employment of SOE laid-off workers is expected to remain severe this year.

Lin Yongsan, Vice-Minister of Labor and Social Security, said at the conference that job-training is an effective way for helping the laid-off workers get new jobs. Various local labor and social security departments should play a leading role in opening various training items and professional-guidance courses to meet market needs. Successful experiences, such as "Partnership Plans of Training for Re-employment" and "Government Purchase Training Results" should be further popularized. In cities where conditions permit, pioneering-work training should be offered while enhancing the purposefulness, practicability and efficiency of training to raise the post-training rate of re-employment.