More and Better Jobs Created Despite Slower Economic Growth
According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), 11.93 million new urban jobs were created in the first 10 months of the year, meeting the annual target of adding more than 11 million new jobs ahead of schedule.
Before 2019, China had created more than 13 million new urban jobs annually over six consecutive years even though its GDP growth had begun to slow.
The country’s economy expanded 6.2 percent in the first three quarters of the year, within the government’s annual target of 6 to 6.5 percent.
Every percentage point increase of GDP growth translates into about 2 million new jobs, said Liu Aihua, spokesperson for the NBS.
Buoyed by steady economic growth, the tertiary industry is helping to make the job market stronger. In recent years, China’s economic structure has shifted from industry-led to service-driven.
The output of the tertiary industry in 2018 was 46.96 trillion yuan ($6.68 trillion), up 7.6 percent year on year, accounting for 52.2 percent of total GDP.
The tertiary industry’s contribution to job creation was about 20 percentage points higher than the secondary industry in 2018 on average, according to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS).
Moreover, new business models are also creating jobs. About 75 million people provided services for the sharing economy in 2018, up 7.1 percent from the previous year and accounting for 9.7 percent of the people who were employed in the country, according to the State Information Center.
For example, Three Squirrels, a snack food company, is transforming from an e-commerce brand on Alibaba’s Taobao marketplace to a digital supply chain platform. It has developed from a five-person founding team into a company with over 3,800 employees in seven years.
“The recruitment of talent can also further strengthen our innovative capability,” said Yin Xiang, an executive with the company.
“The stable labor market is not only a result of the expanding economy but also of an improved implementation of employment-related policies,” said Zhang Ying, an official with the MOHRSS.
China has elevated the status of the employment-first policy to a macro policy for the first time this year. Policymakers are not only emphasizing job creation, but also tailoring policies to boost these efforts.
Starting on May 1, the government lowered the share borne by employers for urban workers’ basic pension insurance to 16 percent from 20 percent, saving employers 272.5 billion yuan ($38.74 billion) in social insurance contributions in the first nine months of the year, according to the State Taxation Administration.
Since small and medium-sized enterprises contributed more than 80 percent of job opportunities in the country in 2018, reducing their burden can further unleash the vitality of the labor market.
Meanwhile, about 27.5 billion yuan ($3.9 billion) in partial reimbursement of unemployment insurance contributions were returned to employers who kept their payrolls intact, benefiting 750,000 firms and 39.93 million employees.
“Our staff felt reassured when we received the 6.61-million-yuan ($939,600) reimbursement,” said a human resource manager with Cangzhou Julong Chemical Co. Ltd.
The company, which used to be a major tax contributor in Cangzhou in Hebei Province, north China, has encountered difficult times over the past two years because of cash flow problems and a stagnant market.
The government’s policy saved the company at a critical moment, said the manager, adding that the reimbursement will be used for payroll and social insurance for employees.
According to the NBS, the urban unemployment rate at the national level in October was 5.1 percent, 0.1 percentage point lower than the previous month.
The decision adopted at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Communist Party of China Central Committee in October stressed the importance of improving the mechanism that promotes full, better quality employment.
While it is currently stable, employment must not be taken lightly from a long-term perspective, especially considering trade uncertainties and the influence of some downstream businesses moving out, said Su Hainan, a researcher with the Chinese Association of Labor Science.
A State Council’s executive meeting on December 4 decided on a host of steps to scale up support for flexible employment, boost job opportunities for people with disabilities and tackle through legal means the stubborn issue of wage arrears affecting migrant workers.
In April, the MOHRSS released 13 new occupations such as farm manager, artificial intelligence project technical personnel and esports player.
The country will need 1.5 million farm managers in the coming five years, which is another indicator of the job market’s potential.
“Nothing big will go wrong next year if we can keep employment stable,” Premier Li Keqiang said at the meeting.