China says overall pressure on employment yet to ease
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The job market in China has seen a good start to the year, with 32,000 job fairs held so far in 2024.
PHOTO: AFP
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BEIJING – China still faces structural employment issues and the pressure on jobs has not eased, the country’s minister of human resources and social security said on March 9, as the slowing economy braces itself for another record number of college graduates in 2024.
The job market has seen a good start to 2024, particularly in the artificial intelligence and big data segments, said Human Resources and Social Security Minister Wang Xiaoping, adding that 32,000 job fairs have been held so far.
Still, the authorities will strengthen policy support to improve youth employment and step up support for small private firms, Ms Wang told a news conference on the sidelines of an annual Parliament meeting in Beijing.
China could see 11.79 million college graduates in 2024, she added, reiterating an Education Ministry forecast.
At the start of the annual parliamentary session this week, the government unveiled its 2024 target for economic growth, aiming for an expansion of “around 5 per cent”.
But headline indicators have tended to underplay the tensions in China’s vast job market, especially among young job seekers, including the millions of college graduates looking for work each year.
More than one in five of the roughly 100 million Chinese aged 16 to 24 were unemployed in June 2023, the last data point before officials at the central statistics bureau abruptly suspended the series.
China resumed publication of the data in January 2024, but excluded college students from it and put youth unemployment at 14.9 per cent in December 2023.
The authorities are under pressure to create enough jobs, particularly as more college graduates chase a shrinking pool of white-collar jobs in a weak economy after the Covid-19 pandemic.
China has tried to steer them to vocational and technical jobs as the world’s second-largest economy builds its advanced manufacturing sector and relies less on the West amid technology curbs imposed by the United States and others.
But lack of skilled talent remains a hurdle for the sector.
Ms Wang said in its efforts to nurture talent, China needs to spur young people to acquire technical skills and work in factories. Beijing aims to create more than 12 million new urban jobs in 2024 and keep its survey-based urban unemployment rate at around 5.5 per cent.
A total of 12.44 million urban jobs were added in 2023, with the average urban unemployment rate at 5.2 per cent, according to official data. REUTERS
