While promoting employment, the government should give priority to offering jobs to migrant workers, because a great number of them are surplus rural laborers and will not be able to resume farming without plots of land, Yu said. They have no choice but to return to cities and find new jobs, he added.

"We should pay attention to the phenomenon that large numbers of jobless migrant workers remain in cities due to factors such as the shrinking demand for labor, insufficient jobs or that they lack upgraded skills," he said. "We have to get prepared for the worst, implement more active employment policies and work out emergency plans."

The aggravating unemployment situation demands immediate solutions. While inspecting Chang'an Automobile (Group) Co. Ltd. in Chongqing Municipality last December 12, Premier Wen Jiabao said enterprises should not hastily lay off workers, but instead should help the government stabilize the labor market.

Alleviating Unemployment

The government had quickly responded to increasing unemployment before the MHRSS began drafting the employment promotion policy. The MHRSS, the Ministry of Finance and the State Administration of Taxation jointly released five measures on December 21 to stabilize the employment market by reducing burdens on companies in difficult situations. The measures, which address the labor surplus problem for the moment, let companies postpone the payment of social security fees for their employees, reduce social security fees, expand the coverage of the unemployment insurance fund, encourage companies to retain all their employees, and provide financial support for workers to take training courses to upgrade their skills.

"The message of the policy is that the government has to address unemployment at the very beginning of the problem," Yu said. "We have to encourage companies to keep as many employees as possible by offering them financial support."

The MHRSS predicts that the postponement or reduction of social security fees and the expansion of unemployment insurance could help enterprises save nearly 100 billion yuan ($14.5 billion) this year.

The essence of the employment promotion policy is that the government will resort to a variety of measures to boost employment, Yu said. First and foremost, it will offer more job opportunities by launching a series of major government-funded projects and boost employment through expanding domestic demand for services and products. At the same time, it will improve related policies, encourage the development of labor-intensive service industries, provide support for small and medium-sized companies and companies operating on narrow profit margins, and support and guide the development of the non-public economy.

The government will actively help companies to ride out the crisis and instruct them in adopting flexible working hours, in addition to maintaining-instead of raising-the current minimum salary benchmark. It also will reinforce unemployment rate control and forecast methods.

The government also will encourage the unemployed to start businesses of their own to boost employment. It will work on a complete system of related taxation, financing, and business registration policies, improve the environment for cultivating more private businesses and offer more training courses.

The package includes training programs for different categories of unemployed people.

"We should make full use of special employment funds and the unemployment insurance fund to offer various training to different people, such as current position training or skills updating for employees, reemployment training for the unemployed in rural areas and training courses for migrant workers to help them master certain living skills," Yu said.