Job-seekers attend a large-scale job fair in Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong Province on February 13, 2023. The local government will organize more than 200 high-quality job fairs in February, as factories face a dire need for skilled workers to ramp up production after the Spring Festival holidays. Photo: VCG

 
China is seeing the first recruitment peak for the spring after further optimizing its COVID-19 management, as crowded job fairs across the country have injected momentum into the rebound of the jobs market. 

Shanghai held the largest on-site recruitment fair since 2020 on Saturday in a local shopping mall, attracting more than 1,200 companies from across the Yangtze River Delta region and throngs of job-seekers. 

"I feel that there are many more job vacancies this year compared with the autumn recruitment season, while the atmosphere of the on-site recruitment season is also more active," Kong Lingyang, a 22-year-old student at the Shanghai University of Electric Power, told the Global Times on Saturday. 

"By organizing this recruitment fair, we feel that Chinese companies' development and social expectations are gradually recovering. This applies to almost all industries, although their speeds of recovery may differ," Zhou Guoliang, director of the Shanghai Employment Promotion Center, told the Global Times. 

Official data from local authorities in Shanghai showed that 25,000 job offers were made through the fair, with more than 15,000 offered to new graduates. 

In addition to Shanghai, many recruitment fairs and events have been held recently across the country. 

Also on Saturday, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) launched a series of activities and events to promote recruitment and entrepreneurship in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province, with recruitment fairs being held for the Yangtze River Delta region, people.cn reported on Sunday. 

On the same day, the ACFTU organized on-site recruitment events in multiple provinces and cities across the country, including Fujian, Guangdong, Chongqing, Sichuan and other places. Services such as on-site business consulting and legal aid were also provided. 

The official 2023 Spring Breeze Action Plan will offer 30 million jobs from January to March, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

The optimization of China's COVID-19 response and the economic recovery have driven recruitment demand, and the overall hiring situation for the spring recruitment season is better than the past three years, since previously hit sectors such as services started catching up, Li Changan, a professor from the University of International Business and Economics, told the Global Times on Sunday. 

The numbers of new jobs and resumes distributed have gradually increased since the Chinese New Year, and they still have not reached the upper limit, indicating a revival of the spring recruitment market, according to a report sent by Chinese online recruitment service provider zhaopin.com to the Global Times.  

The report also reflected a rebound in the services industry. The number of job openings in the hotel and restaurant industry increased by 31.5 percent year-on-year in the first month after the Chinese New Year, ranking first among counted industries.  

The optimization of epidemic management and the just-concluded holidays further stimulated on-site consumption, boosting the recruitment demand of related industries, the report said.

The services sector will become a major target for new college graduates in 2023 amid its recovery, according to Li, and growing demand from the platform economy will also attract some job applicants, while state-owned enterprises and civil service positions remain the top choices. 

This year, 11.58 million fresh graduates are expected to enter the labor market, 820,000 more than the previous year, official data showed. 

Responsible authorities have been stepping up efforts to safeguard the nation's recruitment market. 

Shanghai, for example, passed an ordinance on Friday to promote local recruitment, which will take effect on March 1, thepaper.cn reported. The ordinance covers aspects from support policies to flexible employment, which will further elevate the quality of employment and expand recruitment channels.

Li said that challenges for domestic recruitment linger, but a basic recovery to the pre-epidemic level by the end of 2023 is likely, as the economy continues recovering and stimulus policies start to show positive effects.