According to the survey of the National Bureau of Statistics, unemployment rate in urban areas stood at 5.9 percent in March, down by 0.3 percentage points from February. The figures for April and May are expected to further decrease as resumption of work and production accelerates. In 2019, China’s monthly surveyed unemployment rate in urban areas was around 5 percent. This means that China’s job market has largely withstood the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak. 

The employment stability is a result of a series of measures taken by the Chinese Government through multiple channels to prevent job losses. For the government, ensuring employment and people’s wellbeing has always been an important guiding principle for promoting economic and social development. 

Taxation and policy support to enterprises is a key means to ensure employment stability. Due to COVID-19, some businesses have faced difficulties in production and operations, while some workers have faced pay cuts or job losses. With a priority on stabilizing employment, the Chinese Government is working to help enterprises resume work and production, overcome difficulties together with their workers, and protect jobs through negotiations and measures such as payment adjustment, reduction in working time and rotation of work days. In the meantime, governments at all levels are also protecting the job market by alleviating corporate burdens through reducing, exempting or deferring social insurance premiums, refunding unemployment insurance or offering subsidies to enterprises that don’t lay off workers. 

Fresh college graduates and migrant workers are the major sources of newly added workforce in China. This year 8.74 million students will graduate from colleges and universities, putting huge pressure on the job market. With a focus on employment for college graduates and migrant workers, the Chinese Government has conducted several studies and issued a series of measures to provide more job opportunities to them. Such measures include organizing large-scale online recruitment activities, increasing job opportunities in sectors of basic education, community-level healthcare and community services, encouraging college graduates to join the army, encouraging migrant workers from COVID-19 low-risk areas, especially impoverished areas, to return to work as soon as possible, providing online training and financial support for migrant workers with technology and marketing knowledge to become entrepreneurs, encouraging migrant workers to start small businesses, strengthening policy support to anti-poverty programs to generate more jobs, creating a number of temporary jobs related to epidemic prevention, and providing accommodation to impoverished laborers unable to find jobs due to the epidemic.  

The global economic downturn caused by the pandemic has brought uncertainties for the Chinese economy. Against the backdrop of economic globalization and integration, a decline in economic growth will put huge pressure on the job market. The Chinese Government will remain focused on using every means possible to help enterprises overcome difficulties and stabilize the economy in order to maintain employment, now and in near future.  

(Print Edition Title: Protecting Jobs)