More than one million employees have been taking casual jobs in Shanghai, according to statistics from the municipal labor and social security department.

Officials with the department said as Shanghai's service trades have developed rapily in recent years, more and more employers and workers tend to choose casual employment paid by the hour, which is flexible in working conditions.

Statistics show that about 390,000 of such casual workers were formerly laid-off workers. Workers with an unemployment experience account for 68.4 percent of the temporaries in retail trade and 58.7 percent of those in catering trade.

Most of the casual jobs are less demanding in skill qualification, and people out of work can easily adapt to their new jobs after some simple training, analysts said.

The casual workers paid by the hour have played a remarkable role in the labor market, said officials with the labor department.

Source: Xinhua