A job seeker (R front) fills in a form for employment at a job fair in Harbin, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, March 18, 2023. More than 500 on-line and off-line recruiting events have been scheduled during this job fair, the largest of its kind in recent years held in the province, offering over 115,000 vacant positions in total.  Photo:Xinhua

China's urban surveyed unemployment rate stood at 5.3 percent in July, up 0.1 percentage points from June, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Tuesday, adding that the general employment situation is stable.

The national unemployment rate is within manageable territory, but still has structural challenges such as youth unemployment, Li Chang'an, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

China will have more than 11 million university graduates in 2023, most of whom have settled on jobs before graduation, said NBS spokesperson Fu Linghui at a press conference on Tuesday.

Fu cited figures from the education department, noting that the rate and number of job settlements among graduates had both seen year-on-year increases.

"A total of 19 policy employment campaigns were commenced across China's state-owned enterprises and made significant progress. A series of subsidies targeting social insurance and jobs were granted to private-sector enterprises, which created 670,000 jobs for graduates," said Fu.

Fu stated that the number of students and the time they had spent in school increased in 2022, and there are different views on whether students who started to look for jobs before graduation should be included in labor force surveys.

As a result, China will suspend releasing jobless data for those aged 16 to 24 starting from August, as labor market statistical work needs improvement amid the nation's economic and social development.

"Most Chinese urban youths aged between 16 and 18 are in high school, and youths aged 18 to 24 are in university, which may affect the results of the unemployment survey to some extent," said Li.

Fu said that unemployment issues related to university graduates will be rectified as more support measures take effect gradually, and pledged that the NBS will carry out an in-depth study and further improve labor surveys to better reflect the country's employment situation.

Global Times