China's State Council, or cabinet, on February 8 issued a plan to boost employment by creating 45 million jobs in cities by 2015. The government aims to keep the registered urban unemployment rate at no more than 5 percent. The country also plans to create jobs for 40 million people in the countryside in the fiveyear period.
From 2006 to 2010, 57.71 million new jobs were created in urban areas and 45 million people from the countryside were able to find new jobs, according to official data.
At the end of 2011, China's urban unemployment rate stood at 4.1 percent, unchanged from a year earlier.
The government also pledged to maintain an average 13 percent growth annually in the nation's minimum wage standards in 2011-15, to keep the standard in most regions higher than 40 percent of the average wage of local urban employees.
China has managed to raise its minimum wage standards by an average of 12.5 percent year on year during the 2006-10 period. |