China Faces High Employment Pressure

It's learned from the Ministry of Labor and Social Security that the present sustained growth of the national economy will be conducive to enlarging employment. However, when we take the intensified economic restructuring into consideration, we estimate that in 2001 the number of workers laid off from State-owned enterprises will remain at a fairly high level, and China's urban and rural areas will still face fairly heavy employment pressure brought about by the newly grown-up labor force, and the marked increase in the number of laid-off workers directly entering the market.

It's anticipated that the newly-added labor force will reach about 8 million persons in 2001 in Chinese cities and towns, plus the 14 million laid-off workers carried over from the end of the "Ninth Five-year Plan" period and the jobless workers, all these have resulted in very sharp contradiction characterized by the supply of manpower outdoing the demand for them. It is reckoned that the number of SOE laid-off workers will remain at a high level in 2002, with the average monthly number standing at above 6.5 million people, at the same time, the three-year contract for laid-off workers will expire this year, their number is estimated to stand at around 3 million, all these factors have aggravated the difficulty in the re-employment of laid-off workers. Besides, the surplus agricultural labor force has exceeded 150 million people, the scale of redundant rural labor force entering cities and carrying out trans-regional flow will be enlarged due to difficulties in increasing farmers' income.

Zhang Zuoji, Minister of Labor and Social Security, points out that China seizes the excellent opportunity offered by the sustained growth of the national economy to actively expand employment, trying to raise the reemployment rate of laid-off workers to over 40 percent and limit the registered urban unemployment rate to around 3.5 percent.



By PD Online Staff Deng Gang


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