China take measures to ensure employment and work resumption

To offset COVID-19′s impact on the job market, China has taken measures to ensure employment and work resumption.

In the first quarter of 2020, the government has helped over 10,000 central and local key enterprises recruit nearly 500,000 people to ensure the production of medical supplies and daily necessities in order.

Meanwhile, the country offered “point-to-point” non-stop transportation for nearly 5.9 million migrant workers to help them return to work. An unemployment insurance program has enabled more than 3 million enterprises to enjoy a total refunding of 38.8 billion yuan (5.48 billion U.S. dollars), benefiting nearly 81 million employees in the country.

To ease the financial pressure on enterprises, a total of 232.9 billion yuan of social insurance premiums were exempted and 28.6 billion yuan was deferred from February to March. A special online job fair was also organized by the government to revive job markets hit by the epidemic.

In addition, to promote the employment of laborers from impoverished areas, the government has given priority to work resumption of leading poverty alleviation enterprises, workshops and factories.

As of April 10, over 23 million impoverished migrant workers had returned to their workplaces, accounting for 86 percent of all migrant workers last year.

From January to March, a total of 2.29 million new urban jobs had been created, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics. The surveyed unemployment rate in urban areas stood at 5.9 percent in March, 0.3 percentage lower than previous month.