China faces a grave unemployment situation this year with 24 million people searching for jobs, as 10 million new job-seekers enter the labor market this year to compete with over six million laid-off workers and eight million registered unemployed people for jobs.

The Chinese government expects to create at least eight million jobs this year to help ease the situation, which was exacerbated by the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in the first half of this year.

Officials with the Ministry of Labor and Social Security (MOLSS) said that this year's target was attainable as the country maintains a fast economic growth.

The employment and reemployment issue is high on the Chinese government's agenda. The central government has mapped out a number of policies and measures to create new jobs and promote employment and reemployment.

So far, China's labor departments have set up about 18,000 employment agencies which have helped 9.78 million jobless people find employment in 2002. Job services offered by those agencies to laid-off workers and urban registered unemployed people are free of charge.

Over the past five years, an estimated 18 million workers who had been laid off were reemployed.

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