China News Agency, Beijing, June 15 (Reporter Wang Enbo) The unemployment rate in China's urban survey in May was 5.9%, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the previous month. Fu Linghui, a spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics, reminded on the 15th that despite the survey that the unemployment rate fell slightly, employment pressure should not be ignored.
Fu Linghui cited the main reasons why the unemployment rate surveyed in May fell slightly from April:
First, the economic operation has gradually improved. The continuous improvement in production demand has laid the foundation for the expansion of employment scale and the stability of employment. In May, the added value of the industrial enterprises above designated size increased for two consecutive months year-on-year, the production of the service industry turned from falling to rising, and the month-on-month decline in the total retail sales of social consumer goods and the cumulative decline in fixed asset investment both continued to narrow.
The second is the effectiveness of the employment priority policy. Persisting in reducing burdens, stabilizing jobs, and expanding employment simultaneously, we will focus on stabilizing enterprises to secure employment, grasp the employment of key groups such as college graduates and migrant workers, and encourage flexible employment through multiple channels, effectively guaranteeing the overall stability of employment.
The third is that the situation of employees returning to work continues to improve. A quick survey showed that the proportion of enterprises above designated size with an employee return rate of more than 80% increased by 1.2 percentage points from the last survey at the end of May and early June, of which the proportion of industrial and service enterprises increased by 0.6 and 1.7 percentage points respectively.
Talking about the challenges facing stable employment, Fu Linghui said that the current total employment pressure is greater. Affected by the epidemic situation, the production and operation difficulties of enterprises are outstanding, and the demand for recruitment and employment has declined. Some individual industrial and commercial households and small and micro enterprises have recovered slowly after the epidemic, and employment absorption has been affected to a certain extent. From January to May, China's cities and towns added 4.6 million jobs, a year-on-year decrease of 1.37 million. In May, the unemployment rate in China’s urban survey was 0.9 percentage points higher than the same period last year.
Insufficient employment is also more obvious. In May, about 1.2% of the employed people were in an unemployed state, which was higher than the normal level in previous years; the average weekly working hours of employees in enterprises decreased by 0.2 hours compared with the same period of the previous year.
At the same time, employment pressure on key groups such as college students is still high. In May, the surveyed unemployment rate of Chinese college graduates aged 20-24 (mainly fresh graduates) increased by 1.7 and 3.3 percentage points from the previous month and the same period of the previous year. The scale of college graduates this year reached 8.74 million, a record high. With the concentration of college graduates entering the labor market, the unemployment rate of college students may continue to rise.
He said that in the next stage, it is necessary to implement the employment priority policy more vigorously, do a good job of policy combination, strengthen policy coordination, broaden the employment channels of key groups, strengthen the guarantee of people's livelihood, and promote the stability of the employment situation. (Finish)