Employment concerns the vital interests of the people, the healthy development of the economy and society, and the long-term stability of the country. "Promoting high-quality and full employment is the new orientation and mission of employment work in the new era and on the new journey." On May 27th, General Secretary Xi Jinping delivered an important speech while presiding over the 14th collective study session of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. He profoundly explained the strategic and fundamental role of employment in the overall cause of the Party and the country, comprehensively summarized the historic achievements and valuable experience gained in China's employment work in the new era, and profoundly elucidated the basic connotation, practical requirements, and key tasks of promoting high-quality and full employment.

Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has placed employment at the prominent position of governing the country and administering state affairs. It has upheld the Party's overall leadership over employment work, strengthened the employment-first policy, improved the employment promotion mechanism, and effectively responded to various pressures and challenges, providing important support for improving people's livelihoods and economic development. In his important speech during this collective study session, General Secretary Xi Jinping clearly pointed out that through practice, we have continuously deepened our understanding of the laws governing employment work in the new era and accumulated a wealth of experience. These mainly include: adhering to employment as the foundation of people's livelihood; adhering to the implementation of an employment-first strategy; adhering to promoting employment through development; adhering to the combination of expanding employment capacity and improving employment quality; adhering to giving priority to the employment of key groups; adhering to entrepreneurship-driven employment; adhering to creating a fair employment environment; adhering to building harmonious labor relations; and so on. These experiences are extremely valuable, representing a profound summary of our Party's efforts in employment work in the new era. They must be adhered to over the long term and continuously enriched and improved.

Employment is a necessary condition for the survival and development of workers and their families, and it is the most basic livelihood. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the Party Central Committee has made employment a top priority for people's livelihood, made a series of decisions and arrangements, and spared no effort to promote employment and entrepreneurship, so that the people's jobs are more stable and their labor income is steadily increasing, and the people's living standards are constantly improving. Currently, there are 740 million employed people in China, exceeding the total number of employed people in developed countries. The number of urban employed people has increased from 370 million in 2012 to 470 million in 2023, and the average annual number of new jobs in urban areas is 13 million. In 2023, the per capita disposable income of the Chinese people was 39,218 yuan, an increase of 22,708 yuan from 2012. In the fight against poverty, increasing employment is the most effective and direct way to alleviate poverty, and we should give preferential support in terms of funds, policies, and services. The number of working poor has increased from 12.27 million in 2015 to 32.43 million in 2020, and more than two-thirds of the registered poor are mainly relying on migrant workers and industries to alleviate poverty. We should strengthen the employment guarantee, and achieve a total of 65.32 million re-employed people in urban areas and over 21 million people with employment difficulties. According to the survey, 70% of the per capita disposable income of Chinese residents and 80% of the income of poverty-stricken families come from wage income and business income. In other words, the majority of the income of Chinese workers comes from employment and entrepreneurship. These fully reflect our party's purpose and mission, and we always adhere to the principle of promoting economic and social development as the starting point and end result. Chinese-style modernization is based on people's livelihood. In the new era and new journey, we should adhere to the fundamental position and value pursuit of putting people first, adhere to the people-centered development philosophy, and comply with the people's yearning for a better life. We should continue to expand employment and increase income, strive to improve people's quality of life, and make people feel more fulfilled, more secure, and more sustainable.

Employment is a family affair, and even a national affair. The implementation of the employment priority strategy is determined by the basic national conditions of China, which has a large population and abundant labor resources. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the Party Central Committee has considered the overall situation of stabilizing employment and strengthening the employment priority orientation and employment priority policies. In the face of increasing external uncertainty and instability in economic operation and facing many internal contradictions and problems, the Party Central Committee has created more job opportunities. Especially in the face of the impact and influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, many enterprises have stopped working and the unemployment rate has once reached a historical high of 6.2%. The Party Central Committee has put stabilizing employment at the top of the "six stability" work and put ensuring residents' employment at the top of the "six guarantees" task. It has taken the overall situation into consideration and made decisive moves, fully mobilizing the enthusiasm of all parties, assisting enterprises, reducing burdens, stabilizing employment, expanding employment, and achieving overall stability in the employment situation. In 2020, tax cuts and fee reductions exceeded 2.6 trillion yuan, including 1.54 trillion yuan of social insurance for the elderly, unemployment, and work-related injuries. In the new era and new journey, we must adhere to the goal direction and basic strategy of prioritizing employment from a long-term perspective, and more consciously take high-quality and full employment as the priority goal of economic and social development. We must persist in taking employment as an important benchmark for measuring the rational operation of the economy, and take stability and expansion of employment as the main goal of macroeconomic regulation. We must give priority to the development and utilization of human resources in all production factors, strengthen the evaluation of the impact of major projects, major industrial layouts, and major reform measures on expanding employment and reducing unemployment, and strengthen financial, monetary, investment, consumption, industrial, regional, and other policy support for employment.

Employment is the most basic livelihood. Anhui Province has innovated and created a "three-kilometer" employment circle, promoting workers to enjoy employment services at their doorstep by rationally arranging public service outlets for employment. The picture shows that on April 16, 2024, the Dawn Community in Tianjia'an District, Huainan City carried out the "three-kilometer" employment circle policy publicity to promote the employment of community workers. Huainan Daily provided the picture. Photo by Fu Lirong/

The fundamental solution to the employment problem lies in development. The "cake" of economic development should be made bigger, and the "cake" of employment should also be made bigger. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the Party Central Committee has put forward and implemented the new development concept, focusing on promoting high-quality development, promoting the construction of a new development pattern, deepening the supply-side structural reform and striving to expand domestic effective demand, promoting the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas, promoting coordinated regional development, making new progress in economic restructuring, and continuously optimizing the industrial structure. China's economic strength has achieved a historic leap. The GDP has increased from 54 trillion yuan in 2012 to over 126 trillion yuan in 2023, with an average annual growth rate of over 6%, higher than the world average. The proportion of primary, secondary and tertiary industries in China has shifted from 9.1:45.4:45.5 to 7.1:38.3:54.6. The urbanization rate has increased by 13.6 percentage points to 66.16%. These have laid a solid foundation for stabilizing and expanding employment. It is estimated that every 1% increase in GDP can create about 1.8 million jobs. With the changes in industrial structure, urban and rural areas, the proportion of employed people in primary, secondary and tertiary industries has shifted from 33.5:30.5:36.0 to 22.8:29.1:48.1, and the proportion of urban employment has increased from 48.9% to 63.5%. The proportion of non-agricultural employment has reached 77.2%, and the private economy has absorbed more than 80% of employment. At present, changes in the economic environment at home and abroad, as well as prominent contradictions and problems in economic development, will have profound and complex impacts on employment. At the same time, it is also necessary to fully recognize that the basic trend of China's economic recovery and long-term growth has not changed, and that China has important advantages such as institutional advantages, market advantages, industrial system advantages, and human resources advantages, which will provide strong support for promoting high-quality and full employment. In the new era and new journey, we must adhere to the principle of high-quality development as the hard truth in the new era, develop new productivity according to local conditions, improve the modern industrial system, support the development of industries and enterprises with strong employment capacity, vigorously develop new business models and models, improve the driving force of economic growth and employment, actively respond to the impact of economic development momentum transformation and artificial intelligence on employment, and strive to create more high-quality jobs, stabilize and expand employment capacity, develop new employment growth points, and build an employment-friendly development model, so as to make the process of high-quality development a process of expanding employment.

Expanding employment capacity means providing more jobs for more workers, and improving the quality of employment means ensuring stable employment and good jobs for workers. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the Party Central Committee has taken active measures to create a large number of jobs, while simultaneously improving the quality and expanding the scale of employment. It has comprehensively improved the quality of workers, accelerated the development of education, carried out large-scale vocational skills training, enhanced the matching efficiency of the human resources market, and improved the wage distribution system. It has built the world's largest social security network, effectively improving the quality of employment for workers. The average education years of the working-age population in China have increased from 9.9 years in 2012 to 11.05 years in 2023, and the average education years of new labor force have reached 14 years. There are more than 200 million skilled workers, including more than 60 million high-skilled talents. In 2023, the total labor productivity was 162,000 yuan per person, more than doubled compared to 2012, and more workers are constantly moving to high-productivity sectors. The proportion of labor remuneration in the primary distribution is stable at over 50%, which has achieved a basic synchronization between labor remuneration increase and labor productivity increase. The average annual wage of urban non-private employees increased from 46,769 yuan in 2012 to 120,698 yuan in 2023, and the average annual wage of urban private employees increased from 28,752 yuan to 68,340 yuan. The basic endowment insurance covers 1.07 billion people, and the basic medical insurance covers more than 1.3 billion people. It should also be noted that there are 860 million working-age people in China aged 16-59, and it is expected that there will still be nearly 800 million people by 2035, which is the sum of the population in Europe. While having a huge human resources advantage, it is always facing the pressure of total employment. The structural employment contradiction is still prominent, and skilled workers only account for 27% of the total number of employed people. The supply and demand matching degree of human resources is still low. At the same time, improving the quality of employment has become an urgent desire of the majority of workers. In the new era and new journey, we should adhere to doing our best and acting within our capabilities, focus on stabilizing and improving labor participation rate, accelerate the shaping of modern human resources, and coordinate education, training and employment. We should improve the supply and demand matching mechanism, guide the whole society to firmly establish a correct employment concept, so that workers not only have jobs, but also have stable work, reasonable income, reliable security, and occupational safety. We should promote the realization of decent work and comprehensive development, and form a good situation where everyone can do their best and get what they deserve.

The employment of college graduates and other young people is related to people's livelihood, social stability and high-quality development. On March 20, 2024, the launching ceremony of "Career Guidance for the Future - Spring Special Recruitment for College Graduates in Large and Medium-sized Cities in 2024" and the comprehensive job selection fair were held in Xi'an. The picture shows job seekers on the right side of the job selection fair on the day of the event, learning about job information. Photographed by Zou Jingyi, a reporter from Xinhua News Agency

By effectively addressing the employment of key demographics such as college graduates and migrant workers, we have ensured the stability of employment.Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the Party Central Committee has placed a high priority on the employment of key demographics, formulating and implementing a comprehensive set of employment promotion policies.Meetings are held annually to deploy and promote employment, ensuring the overall stability of employment for key demographics.We have expanded the employment opportunities for young people such as college graduates, smoothing the development path, strengthening employment services, career guidance, and employment internships.A total of 2.6 million college graduates have been deployed to grassroots units.We have continued to promote the transfer of rural labor force for employment, strengthening labor export, enhancing the construction of labor brands, and encouraging entrepreneurship among returning home.We have improved the skills training and employment service levels.The total number of migrant workers in China has increased from 263 million in 2012 to 298 million in 2023, and the number of people working in poverty has remained stable at over 30 million.We have improved the resettlement system for retired military personnel, enhancing their employment and entrepreneurial abilities, and expanding employment channels.We have strengthened the support for those with employment difficulties, and the working mechanism of identifying, dynamically managing, categorizing, and tracking their employment has been refined.In the current and future period, the number of college graduates in China will remain above 10 million annually.There is still potential for the transfer of rural labor force for employment, and the stability of migrant workers' employment needs to be enhanced.There are still about 11 million registered unemployed people in urban areas, some of whom face significant difficulties in finding employment.In the new era and new journey, we need to improve the employment support system for key demographics, and adhere to the employment of young people such as college graduates as the top priority.We need to expand market-oriented and socialized employment channels, create diversified employment opportunities, and enhance career development capabilities.We need to maintain equal emphasis on both external employment and local employment, and take multiple measures to promote the employment of migrant workers, stabilize the employment scale and income of those in poverty, and strengthen the support for those with employment difficulties such as the elderly, the disabled, and those who have been unemployed for a long time.We need to do a good job in the employment of retired military personnel, women, and other groups.

Entrepreneurship is the source of employment, which not only helps workers to achieve their own employment, but also has a multiplier effect of driving employment. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the Party Central Committee has included "encouraging entrepreneurship" in the employment policy, better stimulating market vitality and social creativity, and forming a source of employment. We should constantly optimize the entrepreneurial environment, reduce market access barriers, promote inclusive finance, increase the amount of entrepreneurial guarantee loans and preferential tax rates for key groups, and carry out entrepreneurship training and services. We should develop various forms of flexible employment, support and regulate new forms of employment relying on platforms, encourage self-employment and independent entrepreneurship, and promote and serve various traditional part-time jobs. The number of business entities in China has grown rapidly, reaching 184 million by the end of 2023, including 124 million individual businesses. It is estimated that the establishment of one individual business can drive the employment of 2-3 people, while the establishment of a company can drive more employment. According to monitoring statistics, each college student entrepreneur can drive the employment of 4.55 people on average. There are more than 9,700 entrepreneurial incubation bases and more than 6,900 gig marketplaces across the country. In the new era and new journey, we should improve the security system for promoting entrepreneurship and driving employment, strengthen entrepreneurial policy support, create a full-ecological, professional, and multi-level entrepreneurial service system, optimize entrepreneurial services, improve entrepreneurial quality, create a favorable development environment for entrepreneurship, stimulate workers' enthusiasm and initiative for entrepreneurship, cultivate new and powerful employment drivers, and enable willing workers to dare to start businesses, be able to start businesses, and create businesses. We should give full play to the role of the "reservoir" of new employment forms, promote the development of new industries, new business forms, and new business models, continuously develop new professional standards, cultivate new professional sequences and diversified and multi-level employment needs, and create more opportunities for entrepreneurship and employment in the digital economy.

Promoting social equity is the essential requirement of the socialist system. Creating a fair employment environment is to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to achieve their own development through hard work. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the Party Central Committee has actively promoted the implementation of laws and regulations related to fair employment, and governments at all levels have fulfilled their important responsibilities as defenders of social equity, continuously creating a fair employment environment for members of society and effectively ensuring that workers enjoy equal employment rights. Strengthening the publicity of laws, enhancing the concept of fair employment in the whole society, and increasing the supervision of law enforcement have led to the elimination of unreasonable restrictions affecting fair employment, timely correction of various employment discrimination phenomena, and the improvement of the institutional mechanisms for free flow and independent career choices of workers. Promoting the equalization of public employment service resources between regions, the integration of public employment service systems between urban and rural areas, and the fairness of public employment service rights for various workers have gradually improved the five-level public employment service network covering provinces, cities, counties, streets, towns, and communities, providing recruitment services for an average of 100 million workers and 50 million employers annually. In the new era and new journey, we must create a more equitable social environment, deepen the reform of employment systems and mechanisms, promote the market allocation of labor factors, improve the unified and standardized human resources market system, eliminate institutional and policy drawbacks that hinder the flow of labor and talent, form a reasonable, fair, smooth, and orderly social mobility pattern, strive to eliminate employment discrimination, smooth the upward mobility channels, break the barriers of interest solidification, and prevent the solidification of social classes. We should coordinate urban and rural employment policy systems, implement the "big data + iron feet" management service model, build a national employment public service platform, create "door-to-door" employment service stations, create a fair employment environment for urban and rural integration, and make the fruits of reform and development more fair and beneficial to all people.

Building harmonious labor relations is an important foundation for strengthening the protection of workers' rights and interests and optimizing the employment environment for workers. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the Party Central Committee has adhered to building harmonious labor relations with Chinese characteristics, and coordinated the protection of workers' rights and interests and the development of enterprises. The working pattern of Party committee leadership, government responsibility, social collaboration, enterprise and employee participation, and legal protection has basically taken shape. The labor relations negotiation and coordination mechanism and labor standard system have gradually improved, and the economic rights, democratic rights, and development rights of workers have been effectively protected. China's labor relations have remained generally harmonious and stable. Currently, due to various factors, there are still contradictions in the field of labor relations such as wage reduction and wage arrears, lack of insurance and insurance interruption, illegal layoffs, and new employment forms that bring new situations and problems. In addition, workers' rights awareness is increasing, and the task of building harmonious labor relations is arduous and heavy. In the new era and new journey, we should focus on all aspects of the whole process of establishing, operating, and terminating labor relations, adhere to systematic governance, governance according to law, source governance, and comprehensive governance, improve the labor laws and regulations system, improve the negotiation and coordination mechanism involving government, trade unions, and enterprises, further promote the creation of harmonious labor relations activities, strengthen labor dispute mediation, strengthen labor security supervision and law enforcement, strengthen labor dispatching and employment supervision, strengthen guidance for enterprise employment, urge enterprises to implement labor standards, improve the long-term mechanism for wage arrears governance, strive to form a standardized, orderly, fair, reasonable, mutually beneficial and harmonious labor relations, make workers' work more decent and dignified, and fully respect their labor value. Strengthen the protection of workers' rights and interests in flexible employment and new employment forms, standardize labor standards for new employment forms, strengthen market supervision, actively promote relevant guidelines and guidance, guide platform enterprises to implement policies, smoothen the mechanism for safeguarding rights and interests, expand pilot projects for occupational injury protection, improve the level of social security, and continuously enhance the inclusiveness of platform economic development.

The valuable experience of promoting high-quality and full employment in the new era is not only the successful way to achieve historic achievements in employment work in the new era, but also the scientific guide to do a good job in employment work in the new journey. We must adhere to the party's overall leadership over employment work throughout the process, firmly grasp the new positioning and new mission of promoting high-quality and full employment, adhere to and develop the valuable experience of promoting high-quality and full employment in the new era, fully implement the policy of independent employment for workers, market-regulated employment, government-promoted employment, and encouraging entrepreneurship, clarify new requirements, reflect the times, grasp the regularity, be creative, continue to promote the effective improvement of employment quality and reasonable growth in quantity, continuously enhance the sense of gain, happiness, and security of the majority of workers, and provide strong support for comprehensively promoting the great cause of building a powerful country and national rejuvenation with Chinese path to modernization.

From: WeChat Account of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security

Source: Qiushi, 2024/13