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Global financial crisis spills over to China's labor market

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-11-02 08:58

These export-oriented enterprises that make China the world's workshop, are mainly small and medium-sized and vulnerable to market changes. These are China's major employers, absorbing 70 percent of the aggregate 20-million new jobs every year.

Wang said that the lower-end labor market, especially the migrant workers who are the biggest source of employees in the export enterprises, would suffer from unemployment. As the crisis is now just beginning to hit the real economy, the whole situation could be worse if there is no countermeasure.

The fear of unemployment is also hovering over other places. College students and white-collar workers are now worried about their future in the open market.

This year witnessed more than one million applicants for China's yearly civil servant recruitment exam, 200,000 more than that of last year. Millions of visitors even caused a crash of the online application website on its first day of operation.

College graduates are always the biggest source for new civil servants in China. But this year many white-collar workers joined them.

"It is so unstable and full of uncertainty," said Sun Yan, an employee in a foreign-funded company in Qingdao, Shandong Province. Three years after graduation, she changed jobs three times and bought a one-million-yuan (146,000 US dollars) apartment, to which a civil servant at her age cannot afford by himself.

Sun once viewed her instability in career as a motive for hard work, but now she was afraid of losing her job. After sober reflection, she decided to apply for a job in the government. She said many white-collar workers now thought civil servants were the best choice for the time being.

The competition in the exam will be much fiercer than before -- the average admission ratio of the exam rose from 1:60 last year to 1:78. The most popular post, a once neglected grassroots job with the China Disabled Persons Federation, has more than 4,500 applicants.

A recent China Youth Daily survey on website portal Netease.com shows around 86 percent of the 2,440 participants polled considered taking the exam. Only 8 percent said they had not thought of applying for civil servants' exam.

"If it was last year, I would not think of becoming a civil servant," said Yang Chanjuan, "If I get two offers from the government and a bank respectively, I will choose the former one -- it's more stable." Yang applied for a post in an economic planning body in the central government.

Hu Fengling, a professor at the University of International Relations, said at least 70 percent of the graduates in his university would take the exam. Some students in his university admitted that after the outbreak of financial crisis, career stability topped their concerns.

Yang's change coincided with a steep fall in China's stock market index -- from the peak of 6,000 October last year to around 1,700 recently. In such a situation she could not see good prospects in finance in the near future.

He Wei, director of graduate recruitment department of Zhaopin, Ltd, a leading HR service provider in China, said that as for the college students, financial, consulting and trading sectors could recruit fewer next year since employers had drawn up recruitment plans for this year and would make the plans for next year based on the current situations.

He said that as the crisis is continuing, impacts on other manufacturing industries would take time. However, some industries, such as automobiles and steel, recruited fewer graduates than the previous years.

Economists said as a falling foreign demand is a major reason for a slowdown of economic growth as well as the tough situation in the labor market, boosting domestic demand could keep a high growth rate and thus make more job opportunities.

Fortunately, a series of policies made by the government recently could stimulate more spending. Earlier last month the Communist Party of China (CPC) announced a plan allowing farmers to lease or transfer their land use rights. It is believed that the measure would push consumption in the vast rural area of the country, and thus create more domestic demand and jobs.

Further, in a bid to raise rural incomes more rapidly, the government raised the minimum purchase prices of grains by up to 15 percent next year.

Infrastructure building is another way of boosting demand and employment. The government last week approved a two-trillion-yuan (292 billion US dollars) plan for the construction of a series of railway projects. Officials with the Ministry of Railways estimated it would provide 1.5 million job opportunities. The plan will also fuel growth in industries such as iron and steel, cement and so on.

Zheng Xinli, a senior government policy advisor, said: "In 1997, we dealt with the Asian financial crisis by stimulating domestic economic growth by investing in the construction of highways. This time the money will go on improving the rail network."

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