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Guangdong to create 1m jobs each year

By Zheng Caixiong (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-12-18 08:52

Guangdong's jobseekers come from many sources. In addition to the new university graduates who enter the market each year, the province must also accommodate retired servicemen, labourers from the countryside, farmers whose farmland has been used for industrial projects, recently released prisoners, newly laid-off workers and disabled people, according sources from the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Labour and Social Security.

More than 4 million farmers will have to find jobs in the province's cities before 2010.

In the first 10 months of this year, Guangdong created 841,000 jobs, and more than 66,000 laid-off workers have been re-employed. At the same time, 665,000 surplus labourers from countryside have found new jobs in the cities.

In addition, Guangdong has employed more than 17 million migrant workers from outside the province since the beginning of the year.

Most of the migrant workers are employed by foreign-funded companies, joint ventures and private businesses in the prosperous Pearl River Delta cities.

Guangdong Province has the lowest urban unemployment rate on the Chinese mainland.

Wen Xuefang, a local woman who was recently laid off, said the government's efforts would reduce unemployment. Wen said she was laid off from a shoe factory in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, in November of 2005.