BEIJING – China’s State Council, or Cabinet, on Wednesday issued a plan to boost employment during the 2011-15 period, which aims to create 45 million jobs and keep the registered urban unemployment rate within 5 percent.

Government authorities will work to spur employment while improving employment structure and further perfecting regulations and related mechanism to protect workers’ rights and benefits, according to the plan.

From 2006 to 2010, 57.71 million new jobs were created in urban areas and 45 million people in the rural surplus labor force were transferred to new job positions, official data shows.

By the end of 2011, China’s urban unemployment rate stood at 4.1 percent, the same as a year earlier.

China’s job market conditions will be “complicated” in the 2011-2015 period, and the country faces increasing pressure from creating more job opportunities, according to the plan.

The country also plans to create jobs for 40 million people in the rural surplus labor force in the five-year period.

Structural problems, like employees’ skills not matching labor market demand, are likely to worsen in the coming years, according to the document.

To solve the pressure, the government will provide more effective training and better management of the job market, it said.

The government also pledged to maintain an average 13 percent growth annually in the nation’s minimum wage standards in the five-year period, to keep the standard in most regions higher than 40 percent of the average wage of local urban employees.

China has managed to raise its minimum wage standards by an average of 12.5 percent year-on-year during the 2006-10 period.

Originally posted here:
China releases plan to create 45m jobs