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Roundup: China Sees Increased Employment Rate
China's employment rate have risen steadily over the past five years although many people in the country were laid off from poorly-performing state-owned enterprises.
Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics show that the total number of employed at the end of 1999 was 705.86 million, 26. 39 million more than five yeas ago, though the country experienced the slowest growth of employment since it adopted policies of reform and opening up two decades ago.
During the Ninth Five-Year Plan period (1996-2000), the country 's workforce increased by 6.598 million every year. The figure in the period of Eighth Five-Year Plan (1991-1995) was 8.076 million.
Observers here noted that thanks to the labor contract system, a labor market has been set up and the relations between employees and employers have been improved.
The re-employment project carried out by the government also contributed to the increase. A program of training courses for laid-offs launched by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security in 1998 has helped more than 12 million who are out of work.
Some 18.8 million who lost positions from state-owned enterprises have found new jobs in the Ninth Five-Year Plan period. The number of laid-off workers was 9.2 million in 1999, 2.31 million less than that of the previous year.
According to the NBS report, the improvement in social security including the systems of pension, medicare and unemployment contributed to the stable employment situation.
The report pointed out that the nation's employment mechanism has been restructured in the past five years. The fast-developing service industry and private sector have absorbed a large amount of workers that laid off from state-owned enterprises.
Another distinctive feature of the labor market is the growing proportion of highly skilled workers. The number of employees with higher education in 1999 rose by 0.9 percent over 1995. The total of those who had got high school diploma also rose by 0.8 percent.
Meanwhile, urban Chinese made more money, with an average yearly income of 8,319 yuan (1,002 U.S. dollars). The actual amount of increased salary in 1999 reached 1,000 billion yuan, rising at annual growth rate of 13.2 percent, but in 1995, the payroll to the urban employees rose only 1.8 percent.
Those engaged in burgeoning industries, particularly in high- tech sectors, saw the fastest rise in income. The average salary for those in the software sector was 19,528 yuan (2,353 U.S. dollars) in 1995, more than double the 7,847 yuan (945 U.S. dollars) for workers in traditional manufacturing.
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