Policy support for working smarter

The Fifth Plenum of the 19th Communist Party of China Central Committee has clearly pointed out the direction of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), requiring that the interests of the people should be the pivot around which development is advanced.

China has entered the stage of high-quality development. Sufficient and high-quality employment is therefore the key to ensuring the continuous improvement of people's livelihoods. The global COVID-19 pandemic has affected the global economy and supply chain, which in turn has had an impact on China's domestic job market. In order to cope with this, the central leadership has taken a series of firm measures, such as cutting taxes for enterprises, giving full play to unemployment insurance, and creating temporary public service jobs.

As a result, the unemployment rate which rose to above 6 percent in the first half of the year quickly dropped to 5.3 percent in October. In the first 10 months of this year, the number of newly created urban jobs reached 10 million, which means the objective of the whole year has been finished ahead of time.

So amid the global uncertainties, China's economy has maintained good performance, which marks a good start for the coming 14th Five-Year Plan period, during which China's population and economic structures will change at an even higher pace. But while the working age population will continue to decline and the aged population increase, with the introduction of AI technologies into the labor market, the market demand for labor will also change, together with the relationship between employers and employees.

The car-hailing and fast food delivery apps are an example of this. The companies do not have many employees, but they act as platforms for people to serve others and get paid. How to define and regulate such relationships, and protect the rights of these workers will be a major challenge.

Therefore, the demand and supply in the domestic labor market will be in a balance, but structural conflict, namely the skills of laborers not matching the demands of companies, will remain evident.

That in turn requires that more attention should be paid to alleviating the structural contradiction by providing more training so workers have the skills employers need, improving the employment support system for key groups, coordinating the urban and rural employment policy system. The system should pay special attention to the employment problems of key groups and difficult groups and increase the number of public welfare jobs.

More and higher quality employment is basically to improve people's livelihood, improve people's quality of life, and constantly realize people's yearning for a better life.

－CHENG JIE, DIRECTOR OF CENTER OF MIGRATION, INSTITUTE OF LABOR AND ECONOMIC, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES