Wang Yadong (deputy director of the employment promotion department of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security) said the unemployment rate will remain below 4.6 percent this year. This rate is the highest level of unemployment since 1980.

About 9 million city residents are unemployed, among which college graduates take 3 million and rural migrant workers take 4.5 million.

On the same day, Wang also said, because of the global economic crisis, the number of unemployed people has been increasing since the fourth quarter of the year 2008.

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security is having a great pressure. They have managed to control the urban unemployment rate at 4.3 percent in the second quarter of 2009. However, the situation is still not bright. The jobless rate is increasing for the first time in five years, 4.2 percent in the fourth quarter last year and reaching 4.3 percent in the first quarter of this year.

According to the officer, the global financial crisis is not ready to an end yet. There are still a lot of Chinese companies having a hard time, which makes the unemployment situation severe.

While the economic slows down, the labour-intensive industries of the coastal regions are quickly affected. The jobless rate indicated by the officer didn’t include the country’s 240 million migrant workers.

The total number of migrant workers in cities is about 150 million. According to the ministry’s figures, less than 3 percent of the migrant workers are seeking jobs. This means that only 4.5 million migrant workers are unemployed.

However, before the Spring Festival in January, 20 million to 30 million migrant workers lost jobs. Job flexibility and the government’s stimulus policies have changed their situations. Chinese migrant workers don’t have social safety net and they cannot afford to lose their jobs. The actual employment situation changed with the cost of less pay and longer working hours.

The central government paid 4 trillion yuan for the economic stimulus package. It stimulates the economic growth and brings some slight job increases. The economic growth last quarter was 7.9, compared to 6.1 of the previous quarter.

According to a ministry survey of more than 513 major companies in five provinces, from February to June, 2009, the number of jobs grew by 0.13 percent over October 08 – January 09.

The number of jobs fell by 8.05 percent between October and January. In the second quarter, the demand for jobs has shown a big increase by 50.7 percent more than the first quarter, indicated by the China Institute of Employment Research report.

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The Guangdong labour and social security department pointed out in a press release that in the first 11 months, more than 1.8 million people started their first job, while 626,000 others found new ones after being made redundant.

However the press release also stated that the number of unemployed will increase in the first quarter of next year, and the manufacturing sector will be the worst, as more factories are forecast to close. It seems that the healthy jobs market is going to experience hard times in the year 2009.

The department said that it will be hard for unskilled workers, migrant or otherwise, and college and vocational school graduates who lack experience to find a job.

The financial crisis has brought the worst jobs market for three decades, the director of the Guangdong education department, Li Xiaolu said.

Next year, there will be only 44 job fairs for more than 330,000 new graduates, he said.

260,000 applications were submitted for the 40,000 jobs on offer at the 16 fairs held this year, he said.

Labor authorities have said they will do their utmost to minimize the effects of the jobs crisis, including encouraging people to set up their own businesses and giving priority to families that have more than one member out of work.

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BPOVIA is the leading virtual assistant and Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) service provider in China. BPOVIA is the only virtual assistant company ever been nominated for the prestigious “Red Herring 100 Asia” Awards 2008. Combines international perspective with local know-how, BPOVIA can provide our clients China business development service and help our clients doing successful business in China.

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