People participate in a job fair in the Xiong'an New Area in North China's Hebei Province on January 15, 2025. This job fair targets individuals with employment difficulties, members of zero-employment families, and unemployed college graduates who have left school. The fair is carried out in a combination of online and offline formats, covering the needs of job seekers and enterprises. Photo: VCG

China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and eight other government agencies jointly announced an action plan on Monday to boost rural employment through enhancing household services, aiming to expand household service supply and drive rural economic development.

The action plan proposes measures to generate employment opportunities for rural workers in the household service sector while improving their skills and social welfare.

To create more jobs, the plan calls for launching a dedicated recruitment campaign for the household service industry, encouraging local trade unions to carry out targeted employment assistance programs, and facilitating the integration of household services into the community.   

The plan outlined efforts to upgrade the vocational training of rural service workers, accelerate specialized vocational education, and deepen collaboration between the industry and educational institutions. Additionally, it aims to refine service standards to ensure professionalism across the sector.

To safeguard the well-being of rural workers entering the urban household service industry, the plan includes measures to improve housing support and ensure equal access to essential public services, helping them integrate into urban life. 

It supports entrepreneurship and career development by assisting household service-related graduates and rural women in starting businesses or finding employment. Tax incentives and other credits will be provided to help household service enterprises.

Cong Yi, a professor at the Tianjin School of Administration, told the Global Times on Monday that the action plan comes at a crucial time and has significant importance.

With a booming service industry, especially in elderly care, there is an urgent need to improve service quality through professional training; Moreover, as China's industrial structure undergoes a deep transformation, shifting rural labor to the household service sector aligns with the development trend, which helps not only improve rural employment but also enhance employment quality, Cong said.

In the broader context, the plan is expected to stabilize the job market and drive the high-quality development of the urban household service sector. By boosting employment and entrepreneurship in this sector, it will help increase rural workers' incomes, narrow the urban-rural income gap, and play a vital role in rural vitalization, Cong said.

The surveyed urban unemployment rate in China stood at 5 percent in May, down 0.1 percentage points from April, according to official data.

Global Times