Tough job ahead for China’s employment market despite stable overall situation: report

Source:Global Times Published: 2019/8/25 15:53:27



China has made solid progress in increasing and stabilizing employment in recent years, while pressure still exists with an imbalanced regional employment situation, discrimination in the job market and challenges from new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), a recent report showed.

The report, released during the 12th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress on Friday, showed that pressure on the country's labor market is relatively high while the overall figure for the working-age population is still high. 

The working-age population, from 16-59 years old, numbers nearly 900 million, although there has been a consistent decline in the number since 2012. The figure is expected to decrease to around 800 million by 2035, the report showed, according to a report by online news site 21jingji.com.

The large workforce, combined with the high number of registered unemployed in urban areas, indicate there are severe tasks ahead.

There are obvious regional disparities. In Northeast China, due to resources depletion, de-capacity efforts and restructuring of state-owned enterprises, the brain drain is more obvious. In East China, demand for labor is huge and the unemployment rate is relatively low.

Less developed regions still face difficulties in both attracting and retaining labor. 

Moreover, employment discrimination remains a problem, with some employers refusing to recruit unmarried and disabled people. Some employers publicly advertise positions for men only, or change the employment requirements to prevent women and disabled people from competing for certain positions.

The application of technologies such as robots, drones, and AI has also begun to replace human labor in some occupations, especially simple repetitive labor, which has reduced employment in the short term. At present, manufacturing workers and bank tellers are most affected, the report said.

Despite the complicated situation, China still achieved major progress - a total of 8.67 million new urban jobs were created during the first seven months of the year, according to a report from the Xinhua News Agency. 

China's central and local authorities are fully aware of the issues affecting the labor market.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on August 20 stressed the importance of stabilizing employment, noting that employment is pivotal to people's wellbeing, and that governments should realize the arduousness of job creation and prioritize stable employment.  

In May, the State Council, China's Cabinet, announced it will establish a top-level employment leadership group to better implement government employment policies, a move to stabilize employment and the labor market amid uncertainties such as the ongoing China-US trade war.



Posted in: ECONOMY

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