Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - Li Zhong, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said on Thursday that Ch...
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - Li Zhong, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said on Thursday that China will focus on creating jobs and promote fiscal, monetary, and industrial policies to stabilise its labour market.
As the Chinese economy struggles to recover from a COVID-caused slump, the rate of youth unemployment has risen to a record high of 19.9% in July, while the rate of urban unemployment, which is based on a nationwide survey, has gone down but stayed high at 5.4%. In June, the amount paid out by unemployment insurance reached an all-time high.
China's job market has been mostly stable for a long time, but Li told a news conference in Beijing that there has been long-term pressure.
"More uncertainties and unstable factors have made structural contradictions stand out more. There are still a lot of problems with the job market "he said.
Extended COVID-19 lockdowns in the spring hurt the world's second-largest economy because they messed up factory output and supply chains and hurt small businesses that create jobs. State media say that the private sector provides a third of all jobs in China and creates 90% of all new jobs in cities.
Zhang Ying, the director of employment promotion at the ministry, said at the same news conference, "There have been sporadic COVID-19 outbreaks in some regions since the beginning of this year. As a result, there is less demand for jobs on the market, and some recruitment campaigns have been cancelled or put on hold."
"Some young people who are looking for work have run into new problems."
In the next step, China will work hard to help college graduates and migrant workers find jobs.
China added 19 new policies on top of the ones it already had to help the economy. One of these was to increase the budget for policy financing tools by 300 billion yuan ($43.69 billion), state media reported Wednesday after a regular cabinet meeting led by Premier Li Keqiang.
The cabinet said that the government will take "timely and decisive measures, keep a reasonable policy scale, and make good use of the policy tools in the toolkit." They will also work harder to strengthen the foundation for economic recovery.
