People attend a job fair targeted at the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area held at the Shenzhen World Exhibition & Convention Center in South China's Guangdong Province on November 22, 2023. Some 1,200 companies participated in the fair, offering nearly 50,000 positions. Photo: VCG

China will give greater priority to ensuring the employment of key groups and strengthening the recovery momentum of the job market. Analysts stressed that China has a solid foundation for employment in 2024 as the economic recovery will continue to create new jobs and new productive forces will increase the demand for talent.

Economic growth has further recovered, with more contributions from new growth drivers, and policy dividends have continued to be released, providing solid support for stable employment, Zhang Ying, director of the Department of Employment Promotion of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS), said during an interview with the People's Daily published on Saturday.

Over the past year, China's employment situation has gradually improved, fueled by the continued economic recovery, Li Chang'an, a professor at the Academy of China Open Economy Studies at the University of International Business and Economics, told the Global Times on Saturday.

"It is necessary to offer more incentives to make the supply and demand sides of the job market connect smoothly," said Li.

Zhang noted that the country will announce more policies to boost employment, including the improvement of the support system of fiscal subsidies, tax incentives, financial support and social security.

China has already launched several events to boost the job market, such as the "Spring Breeze Action," which runs from January 25 to April 8 and is expected to provide about 30 million jobs, Zhang said.

The "Spring Breeze Action" was first carried out in 2004 and is devoted to helping migrant workers find jobs and helping enterprises employ workers.

The period after the Spring Festival holidays is usually a peak of employment for migrant workers as labor-intensive enterprises resume production, said Li.

The "Spring Breeze Action" is specifically launched to provide employment services for migrant workers, said Li.

The 2024 "Spring Breeze Action" will feature more than 1,100 public recruitment websites, 4,700 public employment service agencies and over 3,200 gig markets, and it will launch various forms of recruitment activities, said the MOHRSS.

A job promotion event called "Employment Assistance Month" has been carried out since the beginning of the year to help more people with disabilities find jobs, the ministry said.

College graduates are also a key group in the job market. Zhang stressed that the ministry will strengthen support for the group by building a specific service system to help young people find jobs.

In 2023, the number of college graduates in China exceeded 11 million, reaching a new high. New urban jobs created in 2023 stood at 12.44 million, according to the MOHRSS, which analysts said shows that the pressure on total employment and structural problems coexist.

"We will continue to boost innovation so as to create more jobs such as those in the digital economy, the green economy and the silver economy," said Zhang.

The development of new productive forces has created new forms of business, thus creating high-quality jobs and providing solid support for employment, said Li.

New productive forces are driven by revolutionary technological breakthroughs, the innovative allocation of production factors, and deep industrial transformation and upgrading.

Li cited the new-energy vehicle (NEV) industry, which is one of the examples of industrial development empowered by new productive forces.

According to a report that Chinese job-hunting platform Zhilian Zhaopin sent to the Global Times in late January, by 2025, the total talent gap for energy-saving sectors and the NEV industry is expected to reach 1.03 million.

The Zhilian Zhaopin report showed that the demand for talent recruitment in the NEV industry continued to rise in the fourth quarter of 2023. In the past year, the growth rate of recruitment in the manufacturing sector ranked first in various industries, and the recruitment volume of mechanical and electrical equipment production and other fields has been leading other industries this year, read the Zhilian Zhaopin report.

Analysts said that the growing digital economy has also created new jobs. Especially in recent years, new occupations have emerged such as live broadcasters, door-to-door chefs and pet care services providers, attracting more job seekers to devote themselves to "innovative" jobs, analysts said.

A Ningbo-based e-commerce company told the Global Times that it is seeking multilingual live broadcasters to promote its products in overseas markets, especially in the Southeast Asian markets and South American markets.