Employment is a fundamental aspect of people’s lives, directly impacting their well-being. Enhancing the public employment service system is a crucial part of deepening reforms in the employment sector. Recently, the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the State Council released an opinion regarding the implementation of a priority employment strategy to promote high-quality and sufficient employment, emphasizing the need for a precise and efficient public employment service system.
As a component of basic public services, a well-rounded public employment service benefits workers by providing employment information, improving their professional skills, and facilitating communication between labor and management, ultimately enhancing the job market. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party, China has placed significant importance on and effectively advanced its public employment service system, establishing over 4,400 public employment talent service institutions that serve an average of 110 million people annually.
Currently, China’s job market still faces structural contradictions, such as the mismatch of “jobs available but no one to fill them, and people seeking jobs but finding none.” Issues like uneven regional distribution of employment services, weak foundational development, and inconsistent service quality warrant attention. Therefore, it is essential to further refine the system, optimize the framework, and fully leverage the advantages of public services to ease employment and workforce challenges.
The new opinion highlights the need to enhance a public employment service system that covers all citizens. To improve the system, we must increase the inclusivity of services. The number of flexible workers, including delivery personnel and ride-hailing drivers, has been rising rapidly. Key groups such as college graduates, migrant workers, and those who have recently escaped poverty continue to face significant employment pressure. These groups have a high demand for employment services, particularly public ones, necessitating access to suitable job placements, protection of legal labor rights, and the establishment of harmonious labor relations.
Additionally, to improve the system, enhancing the accessibility of services is crucial. A public employment service network covering both urban and rural areas is now largely in place, with most streets and towns having set up employment service windows. However, some workers still struggle to access these services. We need to maintain a grassroots focus by strengthening employment services in industrial clusters and densely populated areas while extending support to resettlement areas, remote regions, and rural areas. This involves breaking down barriers related to residency, region, and identity, establishing local employment service stations and gig markets, and implementing a “big data + on-the-ground service” model to ensure resources reach the grassroots level.
Finally, we must further improve the professionalism of services. The emergence of new employment forms has led to new labor relationships and issues, meaning traditional public employment services are no longer sufficient. This situation requires enhancing the professional capabilities of service personnel, building a well-structured and high-quality service team, and effectively utilizing big data to create a unified national public employment service information platform to promote data sharing. Collaborating with market-based human resource service organizations can also expand the supply of specialized services and facilitate effective resource integration.
