China's unemployment levels will not be resolved by high-speed economic growth, a National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) official has told Xinhua in an interview.

 

During the Ninth Five-Year Plan period (1996-2000), China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an average annual rate of 8.6 percent and 8.04 million jobs were created each year.

 

During the Tenth Five-Year Plan period (2001-2005), however, GDP grew at an average annual rate of 9.5 percent and only 7.48 million new jobs were generated each year, according to NBS figures.

 

From 1996 to 2000 for every percentage point of GDP growth, there was a 0.13 point rise in employment figures, but from 2001 to 2005, the same GDP success only boosted employment by 0.11 points, the official said.

 

The official attributed the phenomenon to a number of factors including the migration of rural labor to urban areas, structural adjustments to the economy, the impact of reforms and the bankruptcy of some state-owned enterprises.

 

Over 100 million peasants had migrated into cities and snapped up job opportunities spawned by fast economic growth, the official said. But as the country optimized its economic structure China's capital and technology-intensive employment was growing faster than industries requiring significant numbers of people.  

 

The economy depended increasingly on technological innovation and capital input for growth. Fewer workers were now needed, the official said. He also referred to the impact of restructuring and the closure of state-owned enterprises.

 

In 1995 there were approximately 112.6 million people working in state-owned enterprises but by 2005 that figure had plunged to 64.88 million. In 1991 around 36.28 million people worked in collectively-owned sectors but by 2005 the figure had plummeted to 8.1 million.

 

The official nevertheless expressed confidence about employment saying the Communist Party of China and the government were focused on the issue and had made job creation a priority.  

 

The government would develop occupational training to make the workforce more skillful and support the development of new labor-intensive industries, the tertiary sector and privately-owned enterprises, the official said.

 

At the end of June 2006 the registered unemployment rate in China's urban areas stood at 4.2 percent. In the first half of the year China's GDP growth rate was 10.9 percent.

 

(Xinhua News Agency August 29, 2006)