The domestic job market embraced positive growth in the third quarter
following the central government's efforts to stabilize employment
during the coronavirus pandemic, a senior official of the Ministry of
Human Resources and Social Security said. "The nation's recruitment demand rose by 1.1 percent year-on-year in
the third quarter, which is of great significance as the figure had
fallen sharply by 25.9 percent year-on-year in the first quarter,"
Vice-Minister Li Zhong said at a news conference organized by the State
Council Information Office on Wednesday. Li said that even this slight improvement was a hard-fought gain
since the nation's economy was severely affected by the domestic
coronavirus epidemic. "Thankfully, the economy has been in recovery since people resumed
working. Stimulus policies by the government have also given stronger
support to companies-the main entities of the market," he said. According to Li, the government has offered assistance to companies to help ease their hiring pressure. For example, authorities have cut companies' payments for
unemployment, endowment and other work-related insurance for workers.
Further, small and medium-sized enterprises were exempted from such
payments until the end of this year. The government also lowered standards for returning the companies'
unemployment insurance as a reward for endeavoring to keep jobs,
according to Li Zhong. "Through the end of September, we returned 85 billion yuan ($12.7 billion)," he said. Though rocked recently because of the pandemic, the nation's job
market did improve steadily during the current 13th Five-Year Plan
(2016-20), which is nearing its end. Ministry data show that from 2016 to 2019, the nation created 13
million urban jobs. The government also helped over 25 million laid-off
workers find new jobs during that period, as well as 8 million people
who had problems landing a job. As an important part of the job market, the population of migrant
workers is also increasing. By the end of 2019, there were 290 million
such workers.
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