China will be unable next year to create jobs for 15 million people -- nearly equivalent to the entire population of the Netherlands, state media reported yesterday.
An estimated 25 million urban residents will be seeking jobs and they will be competing for just 10 million vacancies, the China Daily said, citing a government think tank researcher.
"We anticipate employment pressure will remain high in 2007," said Yang Yiyong (楊宜勇), deputy chief of the Economic Research Institute under the National Development and Reform Commission.
To make things worse, 120 million surplus laborers have migrated to the cities, mostly from the countryside, looking for odd jobs, he said in the 2007 Analysis and Forecast on China's Economy.
A record number of 4.95 million new university graduates -- 820,000 more than last year -- will face a "grave" situation in the job market next year, according to the Ministry of Education.
The urban registered unemployment rate was 4.2 percent last year while no figure is available for this year, the report said.
Foreign economists have frequently criticized China for publishing unreliable unemployment statistics. They target the fact that rural unemployment tends not to be counted as part of the figures.
In order to alleviate the employment strains, the country will have to vigorously expand the service industries and subsidize re-employment efforts, Yang said.
The central government has earmarked 25.1 billion yuan (US$3.2 billion) to fund re-employment this year, according to the paper. The institute has proposed that governments should allocate at least 40 billion yuan next year, it said.
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