CHINA will face huge job pressures this year with growing numbers of college graduates and urban dwellers expected to be out of work, and an army of rural workers crowding into cities, the nation’s top job official said yesterday.

The bleak forecast is based on estimates that 24 million people will enter the job market in 2007, Minister of Labor and Social Security Tian Chengping said at a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People’s Congress.

Those jobseekers will include almost 5 million new university graduates, as well as rural laborers who continue to flood to cities looking for better-paid jobs, and those laid off by State-owned industries, Tian said.

“With such a situation, everyone can understand that we are facing enormous pressures to create jobs,” he said.

The State will work to create 9 million new jobs in 2007, while up to 3 million job vacancies will open up through retirement. But even if those objectives are met, there will still be a deficit of some 12 million jobs, he said.

To make matters more difficult, the State will also seek to re-employ up to 5 million laid-off employees, he added.

Despite China’s labor woes, some areas are actually facing a lack of workers, though Tian said the problem was temporary and not widespread.

Chinese media reports have said that some of the country’s export powerhouse provinces, like Guangdong and Fujian, have been finding it hard both to keep workers and to find new ones.

“Although some places have a temporary lack of workers, I think this is not a bad thing,” said Tian. “It can be a job opportunity for workers, and could help them get rises in salary and other conditions.”

What the government needs to do, Tian said, is to raise the skill sets of workers, who are mainly from rural areas, to train them to work in an economy where companies are increasingly moving up the value chain.

The rise in college graduates from 4.13 million last year to 4.95 million this year is creating new complications, Tian said.

About 30 percent of last year’s university graduates, or 1.2 million students, failed to find work, Tian said, adding that he did not agree with some reports saying “graduation means unemployment for college students.”

Tian said that some university students should perhaps set their job expectations lower. Far better they offer their services to poor and underdeveloped inland regions, he said.

“University students must change their concept of employment and be willing to go to the grassroots where skilled people are needed, to the central and western parts of China,” Tian said.

“Only that way can the employment problem be properly solved.”

China will seek to hold its urban unemployment rate at under 4.6 percent in 2007, up from a 4.1 percent rate at the end of 2006, said Tian. Last year, more than 11.8 million urban residents got new jobs, hitting a record high, driven by a 10.7-percent GDP (gross domestic product) rise.

China is in the midst of an unprecended process of urbanization with up to 300 million rural dwellers expected to move into cities by 2020.

(SD-Xinhua)