China's urban jobless rate to rise in 2004
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BEIJING - China said its registered urban unemployment rate will rise to 4.7% in 2004 from an estimated 4.3% for the end of this year, state press reported.
The year-end figure for 2003 is slightly lower than the previously forecast target of 4.5% but does not include the "tens of millions" of jobless farmers who go to the cities and compete for jobs with urban residents, the Xinhua news agency reported.
Next year's forecast increase is part of the inexorable climb in China's jobless rate in the past three years, as the government has become more willing to admit to an unemployment problem.
China's urban jobless rate was 4% in 2002, according to official statistics.
To stem the tide of the growing numbers of jobless, the government hopes to create nine million new job opportunities and help five million laid-off workers find work in 2004, Xinhua said, citing Minister of Labor and Social Security Zhang Silin.
The ministry's statistics showed more than eight million new job seekers have found jobs so far this year, while over four million laid-off workers have been re-employed.
The number of people laid off from state-owned companies stood at 2.7 million as of the end of November, of which 1.94 million have registered with re-employment service centers.
There were 4.19 million people receiving unemployment insurance as of the end of November. No comparative figure was given.
Xinhua reported in August that China was making little headway in solving its huge unemployment problem as the economy is not growing fast enough to absorb the army of job seekers.
If the Chinese economy grows by 7.0% this year, as targeted by the government, it is possible to create 10 million new jobs, hardly enough for the 24 million people idle job-seekers, it said.
The figure includes 10 million young people who have just entered the labor force, six million laid off from state-owned enterprises, and eight million unemployed who are registered with government labor agencies.
China's gross domestic product rose 8.5% year-on-year to 7.91 trillion yuan for the first nine months of the year, and was up 9.1% in the third quarter.
AFP
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