Graduating students attend a job fair at Nanjing Tech University in Nanjing, East China’s Jiangsu Province, on March 25, 2026. The university held the special spring job fair to boost high-quality employment for its 2026 graduates. More than 220 enterprises provided over 1,000 job vacancies, drawing a large number of postgraduate students. Photo: VCG

China's Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security released a development plan on Thursday for human resources development during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30), setting seven major goals and 18 quantitative indicators, including a target that the number of newly created urban jobs should reach a considerable size during the period.

On employment, the plan sets a target of creating 25 million jobs for urban unemployed people during the coming five years, while keeping the surveyed urban jobless rate within 5.5 percent.

And, urban social security coverage rate should expand, with the plan urging for the gross participation rate of the so-called basic retirement insurance to stay above 95 percent.

The number of people covered by unemployment insurance and work-related injury insurance should reach 255 million and 345 million, respectively, while the size of enterprises' annuity funds should exceed 9 trillion yuan ($1.32 trillion) in total. Meanwhile, the coverage rate of the population holding electronic social security cards is targeted to reach 90 percent by the end of 2030.

The plan projects that 14 million people will obtain professional and technical qualification certificates during the coming five years, with 35,000 postdoctoral researchers to be recruited annually in the country.

As to labor relations, targets set for the end of the period, or 2030, include a 65-percent success rate for labor and personnel dispute mediation, a 93-percent case closure rate for labor and personnel dispute arbitration, and a 97-percent closure rate for labor security supervision complaints.

Beyond the quantitative targets, the plan lays out major tasks in eight fields, including promoting high-quality employment, carrying out large-scale vocational skills training, improving social security system, optimizing talent development mechanism, refining the wage and income distribution system, building harmonious labor relations, and comprehensively enhancing public services.

Global Times