China News Service, July 16, Liu Aihua, spokesman of the National Bureau of Statistics and director of the Department of Comprehensive Statistics of the National Economy, said on the 16th that this year, strong policies have been adopted at all levels to stabilize employment and protect people's livelihood. Comprehensive enhancement. With the employment priority policy, the employment situation in the first half of the year has seen positive changes.
On the 16th, the State Council Office held a press conference on the operation of the national economy in the first half of 2020. Liu Aihua made the above statement when answering questions from reporters.
Liu Aihua pointed out that in the first half of this year, the trend of the national unemployment rate in urban surveys is a gradual decline. Since the beginning of this year, policies at all levels have taken strong measures to stabilize employment and protect people's livelihood, and employment priority policies have been comprehensively strengthened. These policies have indeed achieved positive results in the first half of this year. In recent months, the unemployment rate of the national urban survey has declined month by month, and it was 5.7% in June. From the statistical labor participation rate, it is also basically close to the level of the same period last year. The same period last year was slightly lower by 0.5 percentage points. The proportion of people who did not work during the epidemic period, which everyone is more concerned about, also continued to decrease, and it had dropped to 0.8% in June, basically the same as last year.
"In fact, in the absence of an epidemic situation, there are also some people in our economic life who are not working due to vacation or various reasons. Therefore, under the effect of the employment priority policy, the employment situation in the first half of this year has seen positive changes. "Liu Aihua said.
Liu Aihua said that at the same time, it should be noted that the employment pressure due to the impact of the epidemic is still relatively large this year. In the first half of this year, the number of new urban employees increased by 1.73 million year-on-year. There are some key groups in urban areas where employment pressure is more prominent, and the rural labor force working outside the country has decreased. At the end of the second quarter, the rural labor force working outside the country decreased by 4.96 million year-on-year, a decrease of 2.7%. Unemployment rate of college students reached a new high in the same period. Affected by the epidemic, the demand for college graduates' recruitment declined this year, and job interviews were subject to certain restrictions.
According to the data from the labor force survey, in June, there were 20-24 year-old college graduates and above in the country. This part of the population is mainly new graduates, and the survey unemployment rate reached 19.3%. This 19.3% increased by 2.1 percentage points from May and 3.9 percentage points from the same period last year. Therefore, the current employment situation, on the one hand, has some positive changes on the whole, on the other hand, some key groups are under greater pressure, and our urban survey unemployment rate accurately reflects such characteristics.
Liu Aihua said that the next step is to comprehensively strengthen the employment priority policy in accordance with the requirements of the "Government Work Report" and do everything possible to stabilize and expand employment. First of all, we must stabilize the market players, implement policies to reduce taxes and fees, and reduce social security fees and house rents to help market players overcome difficulties and stabilize the basic market for employment. Secondly, it is necessary to promote market-oriented and social employment of college graduates, and to better solve the employment problem of college graduates through measures such as increasing the enrollment of graduate students. In addition, it is to strengthen employment assistance, encourage new forms of employment and flexible employment, and drive more rural laborers to find jobs locally.