Domestic employment stable as race for talent begins

As domestic tech companies continue to grow, so too does their demand for qualified employees.

Retail, logistics and digital technology have taken shape as the core businesses of the internet giant.

At the end of the third quarter of 2018, JD.com boasted a 170,000-strong staff and a huge supply-chain network, which led to tens of millions of jobs in outsourcing and third-party online stores.

Likewise, e-commerce company Alibaba, which owns China's largest web-based shopping platform, last week pledged no layoffs in 2019. Instead, it will continue to recruit new staff, ramp up training programs and utilize more platform resources to help create more jobs.

In fact, as a prolonged economic slowdown cast a shadow on China's employment situation, businesses in vigorous and promising emerging industries, in particular services and high-technology, have turned to job creation.

Analysts said the tertiary industry, accounting for over half of China's GDP last year, has served as the ballast stone for a stable job market as services, mainly labor-intensive sectors, are more effective in creating new job opportunities than the traditional secondary industry.

"Every percentage point of the country's GDP growth is translated into more new jobs," said Wu Ge, chief economist of Changjiang Securities, citing statistics in recent years.

Thanks to sprouting new business models and industries, labor demand increased in an unprecedented pace in sectors including e-commerce, online entertainment, finance, and smart manufacturing, as well as web-based ride-hailing and food delivery.

The overall jobs-to-applicants ratio in China stood at 1:27 in the fourth quarter of last year, indicating robust demand, data from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security showed.

The data also showed the private sector played a major part in propping up employment with faster staff growth, and more migrant workers preferred central and western regions.

The country's policymakers attach great importance to employment, which, along with consumer prices, is an area that directly affects everyday life and determines the health and prospects of the economy.

Given steady economic performance and rapidly-growing new growth drivers, China is confident in and capable of handling all kinds of risks and challenges and realizing more higher quality employment, said Meng Wei, a spokesperson of the National Development and Reform Commission.

Editor：梁子硕