China's booming economy will provide millions of new jobs in 2006, but growth will be insufficient to absorb all new entrants and laid-off workers, yielding a gap of 14 million unemployed, one million more than in 2005, according to official estimates presented at a recent conference in Beijing.

Demand for labour will increase with about eight million new jobs created this year, and adding positions opened due to natural retirement, labour demand in urban areas would in fact rise by about 11 million this year, according to a conference recently organized by the State Development and Reform Commission. Officials who took part in the meeting came from the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Ministry of Personnel and the National Bureau of Statistics.

At the same time, the supply of labour would hit a new peak, and unmatched by a growth in demand would leave a large supply of excess labour, officials said. The gap between labour supply and demand would thus be 14 million, an increase of one million people over the previous year.

One of the largest increases was due to the large number of those reaching the legal working age of 16, a total of more than 17 million this year.

They estimated that the labour supply in urban areas would be around 25 million this year. A breakdown of that number shows that the growth of the labour force in urban areas was estimated at about nine million this year; another 4.6 million were expected to be laid-off from state-owned enterprises (xiagang gongren) because of economic restructuring; the estimated number of registered unemployed in urban areas would be 8.4 million; and the rural labour force and retiring soldiers would account for around three million.

Source: China Economic Net (14 February 2006), Labour and Social Security News website (14 February 2006)

21 February 2006