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Jobs for survivors

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-05-24 11:08

Creating jobs for survivors of the earthquake is an urgent task.

It is difficult to maintain employment growth in the face of the severest winter weather in 50 years that hit central and southern China early this year, and the US-led global slowdown that has increasingly affected the country's export growth.

The worst earthquake China has suffered in 30 years has only made it even more difficult to address the mounting unemployment pressure.

But policymakers must dig deep to come up with more efforts to create enough jobs for the survivors.

The labor and social security communique the statistical authority recently released showed that the country had created 10.4 million urban jobs last year. And the average annual income for urban workers increased by 18.7 percent to 24,932 yuan ($3,562).

Such growth of employment is much needed since more than 10 million new workers will enter the domestic market every year.

Though the Chinese economy is still expanding at double-digit pace, it will not be easy to reach the country's employment goal.

Fortunately, in spite of the severe winter weather and weakening external demand, the country has still managed to boost employment growth.

Between January and March, 3.03 million urbanites found a job, or 30 percent of the annual goal of 10 million new jobs.

This is a start better than expected. The government's efforts to promote employment growth has worked.

However, the latest seismic disaster is an even tougher employment challenge.

Immediate and generous aid is badly needed to help lift the survivors out of their misery. However, reconstruction of their homelands and lives also require the swift creation of a large number of jobs.

There is a worrying sign that the growth of tax revenue from private enterprises was 0.8 percentage points lower than the 33.8-percent growth of the national tax revenue in the first quarter. It is the first time since 2000 that the former has fallen below the latter, indicating that private enterprises may have to bear the brunt of the country's tight monetary policy.

Small and medium-sized private enterprises have become the major provider of new jobs today. The government should tilt its monetary and fiscal policies in favor of them to boost employment growth.