Raising laborers’ skills best way forward

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security recently issued a Technical China Action Plan, which lists 20 major tasks for improving workers’ technical skills and building a labor force with impressive technical abilities to give economic development a push.

Workers with good technical skills are essential for realizing “Created in China” goals. The 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) calls for improving the manufacturing industry by creating quality products. Currently, China has an independent, comprehensive modern industrial system that can be divided into 41 major categories, 207 sectors and 666 detailed departments.

Strengthening the manufacturing sector and making it more competitive will require a sizable technical workers team, balanced structure and good abilities.

Undoubtedly, people are a major driving force for the economy. However, the seventh national census found that the nation’s population growth rate has been slowing for 10 years now, and the elderly population is growing rapidly. Shortage of labor is thus a reality the Chinese economy must face.

In this backdrop, the best way forward is to improve laborers’ skills and shift the focus from labor quantity to quality, so as to offset the pressure from the labor supply shortage.

Efforts at improving laborer skills in the past few years have shown results, but they are not enough.

There are two job vacancies staring at each technician, such is the shortage. The number of workers with technical skills accounts for only 26.8 percent of the whole working population, and have good technical skills among them only 30 percent.

That underscores the need to cultivate the potential of each laborer so that the entire industrial sector can enjoy the dividends. That’s essentially why the Technical China Action Plan was introduced. The idea is to raise more than 40 million fresh technical talents, that is 30 percent of the entire labor force.

The strategy to strengthen China’s entire labor force takes into account the country’s demographic and labor supply realities.