Solution of Employment Problem, Still a Long Way to Go

Home>>Business

Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, November 22, 2002

Solution of Employment Problem, Still a Long Way to Go

DISCUSSION

CHINESE

SEND TO FRIEND

Though from 1990 to 2001, the scope and scale of the employed in China has expanded from 650 million to 730 million, an increase of 83 million. However, due to the imbalance of labor supply and demand the employment still remains a big problem to which attention must be paid by the government. And it is an important and difficult task to deal with at present and even for quite a long time to come in future.

For employment to become a problem, we should say, it began to show up in the transitional period from the planned to market economy. It is a result entailed from the unified allocation to marketization of labor and employment, from transformation of the SOEs by way of closedown, merger and acquisition or switchover and flow of labor from countryside to cities. At the press conference for reporters foreign and domestic, Zhang Zuojii, Minister of Labor and Social Insurance acknowledged openly that in the recent two years, China has witnessed a heavier pressure for employment. It sees a rise of unemployment rate in towns and cities from 3.1 percent in 2000 to 3.6 in 2001 and again to 3.9 percent in last September.

And from a relatively long-term point of view, the employment problem China is confronted with deserves no negligence at all. Therefore, Hu Angang, the noted economist said, China is faced with a battle for employment.

The prolongation of the problem is first and foremost manifested in the process of China's modernization in which the ceaseless acceleration of urbanization of rural areas will be sure to set free a great number of labor-forces to crowd into cities. And once these labor-forces are not effectively taken in on time by relevant industries the problem of unemployment will become serious. Viewed the problem from this angle, the greatest threat for China is not the unemployment of those in towns and cities but the potential unemployment from the rural areas.

At present, the urbanization rate in China is somewhere around 30 percent. If this is to reach some 75 percent as in developed countries that means to solve an employment for a population of 300 million more in future. A more substantial number tells that every year will see some 8 or 10 million heads from rural areas to add into the city-labor contingent in the time to come.

To speak of the problem more accurately, why does the ongoing process of labor-forces from countryside into cities constitute an employment pressure for China? It is because on the one hand the investment for the development of relevant industries in China has to be raised and moreover on the other hand, the quality of the rural labor-forces is relatively poor and is hard to cater to the requirement as demanded in the labor market. Along with the abolition of the limits for rural labor-forces into cities as to their trades, kinds of work, terms of contract and registered residence it will become an increasingly urgent problem to solve the employment for labor-forces from rural areas. In this regard, the "bottleneck" for the solution of the problem lies in the poor quality of labor-forces from the rural areas.

Take the Yancheng County of Henan Province, an experimental spot for urban-rural unified solution of employment in the country for example, the county has for the moment some 600,000 labor-forces in surplus, of which 550,000 are from the countryside. However, those who've gone over regular training with qualification certificates come only to 3000 in total.

Therefore, this means to cure the decease without finding out its root-cause. So in the time to come, the government has to work out on the basis of the 1996 "Law for Vocational Education" a system for a more effective training so as to make it cater to the needs of the employment market.

Of course, the rural labor-force constitutes only one-side pressure for employment. The newly added workforce into the peak for employment, the daily increasing workforce in towns and cities and the booming contingent of university graduates, all pose a new and bigger challenge for employment. As learned, the total supply of newly booming workforce will come to its climax, reaching some 46.5 million in number during the "Tenth Five Year Plan" period.

The problem of employment in China is different from that in such developed countries as in Europe and the USA. It is a special problem cropping up in the period of economic transition, a problem happened in the course of going high speed in for modernization. Therefore, to handle the unemployment problem needs not only the matured measures and methods taken from the western developed countries but also to study the special circumstances in China and especially the conception to handle the problem from a long-term point of view.

And so, the Chinese government has to take effective measures in line with the present employment situation, such as improvement and perfect of the social insurance system, implementation of re-employment project, encouraging civilians to make investment and active solicitation of foreign capital, etc. And what is more is that it must take the expansion of employment as a systematic project to be dealt with in the long time to come.

By People's Daily Online

Questions?Comments? Click here

Press Conference on Work on Labor, Social Security and Re-employment

Re-employment Project Requires Systematic Operation

China Pushes Use of Ethanol as Fuel ( 7 Messages)

Eight Opportunities before China Within Upcoming 20 Years ( 2 Messages)

Sino-US Relations Improve Despite Neo-realism ( 9 Messages)

Cabbage Tells Changes of Beijingers' Life ( 4 Messages)

Advanced Real-time Simulation Computer Passes Appraisal in Central China ( 2 Messages)