China’s job vacancies grew by 28 per cent in second quarter, but recovery is uneven

Job vacancies increased 28.25 per cent in the second quarter compared to the first three months of the year, a new report says

Despite buoyant numbers overall, young graduates are still finding it tough to find work as a record number enter the job market

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Job applicants read recruitment information at a job fair in Wuhan, in central China’s Hubei province. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 6:15pm, 21 Jul 2021Updated: 3:10pm, 23 Jul 2021

Job vacancies in China grew in the second quarter of the year, although the increase was uneven across sectors and regions, reflecting the nation‘s patchy economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, a new employment survey shows.

The number of jobs available per applicant increased to 2.09 between April and June, up from 1.66 in the first quarter and 1.35 in the same period last year, according to the survey conducted by the China Institute for Employment Research (CIER) at Renmin University of China and job search website Zhaopin.

“The domestic pandemic situation largely stabilised in this quarter. Demand for recruitment has increased significantly,” said the CIER report, which was released on Tuesday.

Compared to the softer job market in the first three months of the year – when some parts of the country were in lockdown after being hit by sporadic coronavirus outbreaks – the number of vacancies increased 28.25 per cent in quarter two, exceeding the 1.97 per cent rise in the number of jobseekers, CIER said.

The trend indicated by the survey is in line with China’s falling unemployment rate.

The survey’s findings are in line with China’s declining official surveyed unemployment rate. It stood at 5 per cent in June, 0.5 percentage points lower than at its highest point this year in February, and 0.7 percentage points lower than the same period last year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said last week.

“The drop in the urban unemployment rate is mainly attributed to the continuous and stable economic recovery and employment stabilisation policies,” said NBS spokeswoman Liu Aihua.

New job vacancies were mostly among large enterprises, with openings surging by 119.27 per cent from the same time last year, and 82.06 per cent from the first quarter, according to the CIER report.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which account for more than 90 per cent of employment, but have been hit hard by the sporadic lockdowns and surging raw material prices, offered fewer positions, with the report showing more than one applicant applied for every SME job.