China steps up efforts to stabilize employment

BEIJING -- China has taken a multi-pronged approach to stabilize employment, scaling up support for fresh graduates, rural labor force, those in flexible employment and other key groups of jobseekers.

China International Intellectech Group Co Ltd initiated a campaign to facilitate employment for fresh graduates this July. Thanks to this campaign, more than 1,300 companies in diverse sectors including computer software, finance and electronics have offered over 11,000 job openings.

The centrally-administered state-owned enterprise on human resource services forged cooperation with nearly 100 universities to hold exclusive campus recruitment activities in the first half of the year.

During the same period, the company also organized 162 online job fairs, attracting around 41,000 enterprises to advertise 175,000 positions.

In order to encourage companies to hire young jobseekers, China has rolled out a subsidy policy for firms that hire young people who graduated from universities within the last two years, as well as candidates aged between 16 and 24 who have filed for unemployment.

Effective till the end of this year, the policy will grant the companies a one-off subsidy of no more than 1,500 yuan (about $208.43) for each young jobseeker they hire.

As of May, the number of young people aged between 16 and 24 in China had exceeded 96 million, and over 33 million of them have entered the labor market, according to Fu Linghui, spokesperson of the National Bureau of Statistics.

Among these young jobseekers, over 26 million have found jobs while some 6 million are still looking for work.

"With the economy continuing to improve, there will be solid support for the employment situation to remain generally stable," the spokesperson said.

Other human resource services companies have been focusing on supporting rural labor forces and disabled people, helping them find jobs and learn new skills.

China Strait Talent Market has set up 46 offices in Yunnan, Guizhou, Ningxia and other regions with relatively large rural labor forces, and has trained more than 5,000 people in professional skills and entrepreneurship.

A human resource service group based in Sichuan has set up a service network connecting governments, enterprises and people with disability and it has served 7,000 people with disabilities to date.

Flexible employment, which includes individual businesses, part-time jobs and new types of employment, is becoming increasingly important in broadening new employment channels and relieving employment pressure.

China has been bolstering its support for flexible employment by implementing a range of channels and measures aimed at safeguarding the rights and interests of individuals engaged in such work arrangements.

GaiaWorks, a workforce management system developer headquartered in Suzhou, has established a workforce management cloud platform, matching over 300 companies with 40,000 gig-work jobseekers.