The government is to improve job services for urban laid-off
workers and rural migrant workers to keep the unemployment rate
down.
The Ministry of Labor and Social Security said it would continue
the active employment policy to promote reemployment for laid-off
workers and remove urban restrictions for rural migrant
workers.
Liu Danhua, deputy director of the ministry's training and
employment bureau, said China had established a public employment
services mechanism for the jobless.
Liu said the mechanism had enabled the establishment of 3,860
government-funded employment agencies across the country by the end
of 2005, with about 27,000 staff.
The ministry also encouraged the opening of private agencies to
expand channels for job-seekers, said Liu.
By the end of 2005, about 8,600 private agencies had been set
up, playing an important role in improving services for laid-off
and migrant workers.
The world's most populous country will continue to be troubled
by unemployment, said the Ministry of Labor and Social Security in
its 2006-2010 development outline.
The outline says most of the employment pressure stemmed from
workers laid off from state or collective businesses, a rising
number of college graduates, rural migration and farmers losing out
to industrial development and urbanization.
Officials place the population of migrant workers at 150
million, or 11.5 percent of the population, around double that of
ten years ago.
The outline says the ministry aims to keep the urban
unemployment rate below five percent between 2006 and 2010 despite
mounting pressure from the growing labor force.
(Xinhua News Agency November 23, 2006)