China Guide

Employment presents a great pressure on China due to its huge population, abundant labor resources and economic restructuring. The Chinese government regards increasing employment opportunities as a major strategic task in economic and social development, and controlling the rate of unemployment as a main target in macro-economic regulation and control. It has rationally readjusted the employment structure, established a market-oriented employment mechanism, put great efforts into increasing overall employment and maintained basic stability in the general employment situation. By the end of 2001, the country's population had reached 1.27627 billion (excluding the populations of Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and Taiwan Province), and 730.25 million people were employed, accounting for 77.03 percent of the total labor force. Employees in urban areas accounted for 32.8 percent of the total, and those in rural areas for 67.2 percent. The unemployment rate on record in urban areas was 3.6 percent.


Through the common efforts of the government and all sectors of society, total employment in China has grown remarkably. Since 1978, the number of employees in urban and rural areas has increased by 328.73 million, of which 144.26 million are urban employees.


The employment structure, too, has changed dramatically. In 2000, employees in the primary, secondary and tertiary industries accounted for 50 percent, 22.5 percent and 27.5 percent, respectively. In recent years, the employment percentage of the primary industry has dropped markedly, while the employment percentages of the secondary and tertiary industries have risen rapidly. Particularly, the growth rate of the employment percentage of the tertiary industry has been higher than that of the secondary industry. The employees of state and collective enterprises and institutions accounted for 37.3 percent of the total urban employees in 2001, down from 99.8 percent in 1978. Meanwhile, the number of employees of private, individually owned and foreign-invested enterprises has increased drastically. In the countryside, the household is still the dominant unit of agricultural employment. However, with the implementation of the urbanization strategy and the development of non-agricultural industries, non-agricultural employment and the transfer of rural labor have increased rapidly. By the end of 2000, the number of employees of township enterprises had reached 128.195 million, of which 38.328 million were employed by township collective enterprises, 32.525 million by township private enterprises and 57.342 million by individually owned township enterprises. Since the 1990s, the labor force transferred from rural to urban areas has topped the 80-million mark.


With the speeding up of the economic restructuring, the long-accumulated contradictions in the operating mechanism of enterprises have become increasingly apparent, and large numbers of redundant employees in enterprises have been laid off. Most of the laid-offs from state-owned enterprises are relatively older, poorly educated and skilled. Therefore, it is rather difficult for them to find reemployment. To settle the problem of the laid-off and unemployed personnel, the Chinese government, while guaranteeing their basic livelihood, has formulated a whole slue of policies, complete with a variety of measures, to ease the way for their reemployment.




[Last Modified By Admin, at 2006-01-04 12:30:18]


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