On January 20, 2015, China Institute for Employment Research successfully held 2014 Fourth Quarterly Review of Employment in China at Room 347 of Qiushi Building, RUC. Pu Yufei, Director of Employment and Income Allocation Department, National Development and Reform Commission, Hu Deqiao, representative of Director of Major Project Inspection Office, National Development and Reform Commission, Zhang Ying, Deputy Director of Department of Employment Promotion of Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, Yu Hongwen, Chief of Population and Employment Statistics Department, National Bureau of Statistics, Sun Zhongzhen, Chief of Employment and Income Allocation Department, National Development and Reform Commission, Wu Xingyan, General Manager Assistant of Suzhou Industrial Park, Human Resources Development Co., LTD, Lin Min, Office Director of the company, Hao Jianbin, Zhang Ting, Policy Specialist of Alibaba Group, etc, attended the meeting at invitation. Professor Yang Weiguo, Dean of SLHR, Professor Zeng Xiangquan, Director of CIER, Ding Dajian, Director of Data Center of SLHR and CIER Researcher, and other researchers, Geng Lin, Ge Yuhao, Tu Yongqian, Li Hongjian, Yang Yumei, etc., also participated in the meeting. The meeting was hosted by Professor Tang Kuang, Party Secretary of SLHR.
To begin with, Professor Yang Weiguo gave thanks on behalf of SLHR to the support and efforts of the government, enterprises and the academia to the quarterly employment analysis conference. Then, he briefly introduced employment related research projects of CIER and SLHR. He hoped that further cooperation on academic research with National Ministry be made and that SLHR could make more contributions to employment decision making.
In the following panel discussion, researcher Ding Dajian gave a speech entitled “The Analysis of 2014 Fourth Quarter Chinese Employment Situation Based on the Internet Data from Zhaopin.com. To begin with, he gave a brief review of the dilemma of CIER long-term trend and solutions. Then, he went into detailed analysis of the reason why CIER index changed, and employment situation of different industries, occupations, regions (large and medium-sized cities) and different kinds and sizes of companies. He believed that the changes of CIER index of the fourth quarter of 2014 had the following features: (1) CIER quarterly index kept decreasing and the employment situation was stable; (2) The recruiting demand increased with economic growth, which was in line with theoretical hypothesis; (3) The differences between competitive pressures of employment among industries and occupations further shrank in this quarter, and influence of institutional factors still exited; (4) The differences between inter-city and inter-regional competitive pressures of employment shrank in this quarter. The employment situation of east, central and west regions, and second-tier and first-tier cities was upside down, which became normal; (5) The competitive differences among different kinds of companies reflected job seekers’ pursuit for stable jobs.
General Manager Assistant Wu Xingyan delivered a speech entitled "Report Human Resources Situation in Suzhou Industrial Park in the Fourth Quarter of 2014”. Firstly, she analyzed human resources index of the park in the fourth quarter of 2014 and market data. She found that: (1) in the fourth quarter, the demand index had large decrease compared with that of last month and last year; (2) In the fourth quarter, the demand and supply both decreased compared with that of last year (the demand index decreased by 14.0%; the supply index decreased by 21.1%; the total match index of the Park was 118%). Some companies in the Park may be challenged by the difficulty of employment. The features of human resources market and employment situation of graduates showed that: (1) in the fourth quarter, high-tech companies on biomedical, nanometer and cloud computing technology showed strong ability of absorbing graduating students, while traditional companies on machinery, electronics had few vacancies for graduating students; (2) In 2014, there was significant increase of the starting salary of employees with college degree and bachelor degree compared with that of the same time in 2013 (10.5% and 10.2% respectively); starting salary increase of those with high school degree and technical high school degree followed(6.8%). At last, she made predictions on human resource situation of the first quarter of 2015: The recruiting demand of park enterprises will be stable with some increases based on survey of major companies in three industries; services industry and high-tech industry will have relatively higher labor demand.
CIER researcher Geng Lin gave a speech entitled “Labor Market Predication Based on CIER Index”. First, she looked into macro-economy in 2015. Then, she analyzed the relationship between CIER index and macro-economy index. Finally, she made predications on labor market based on CIER index. The main conclusions of the speech were: (1) The sub-item of CIER monthly index had strong negative correlation with PMI, non-manufacturing index, and manufacturing employee index; (2) CIER monthly index had weak negative correlation with CPI; (3) Due to trendy and seasonal factors, CIER index of this quarter decreased continuous; (4) The model showed that the CIER index will have significant decrease in January 2015, and the index will be the same in March as in February.
CIER associate researcher Ge Yuhao gave a speech entitled “Employment Analysis of Industries and regions in 2009-2013”. After analyzing changes of CIER index in recent years, he found: (1) Since 2009, countrywide employment situation has turned out better, because both recruiting demand and number of people searching for job were on the increase. However, since the growth rate of demand was higher than that of supply at the same time, quarterly CIER index showed significant decrease over time; (2) In 2009-2013, employment situation of different industries varied a lot. The highest industry average CIER index was higher than 3.5, while the lowest was lower than 0.7. The structural problem in industries was serious; (3) Since 2009, the trend of CIER across industries was similar, with competitive pressure kept decreased. Comparatively, the employment pressure of manufacturing industry was the highest, followed by that of culture industry, living service industry and product service industry; (4) The number of people searching for job and the labor demand were higher in first-tier cities than in second-tier cities, which indicated that relatively developed cities offered more employment opportunities. Based on CIER index, Guangzhou, Suzhou and Shenzhen were cities with the highest employment pressure; (5) Based on changes of CIER index, the index of the east, middle and west showed sharp decrease. The trend was similar in different regions. The differences of employment pressure in different regions have shrunk since 2009.
Professor Zeng Xiangquan introduced the research result of his project “Employment Quality Index System of Secondary Vocational School Graduates”, which was delegated by Ministry of Education. After abundant interviews on government departments, companies, schools and graduates, seven dimensions were proposed: compensation, hours, work load, competency and interest, working environment, career development and respect. Based on questionnaire survey on more than 1000 graduates of secondary vocational schools in Chengdu and Zibo, researchers found that graduates enjoyed good working environment and high professional self-identity, while suffered from low compensation, long working hours, inadequate training, and high work load and pressure. Zeng Xiangquan suggested that internet communication and information distributing platform be built in secondary vocational schools to facilitate future tracking survey of employment quality of secondary vocational school graduates. To ensure effective survey results, future survey should be conducted by third parties on graduates who left school in the last 2-3 years.
After that, in the free talk period, Pu Yufei, Zhang Ying, Yu Hongwen, Sun Zhongzhen, Hao Jianbin, Zhang Ting and so on spoke highly of the seminar and exchanged their own viewpoints with the experts based on topics of causality of prediction, data validity, improvement on indicators, employment quality, business-startup-driven employment, differences between work and employment, etc.,.
Finally, Professor Zeng Xiangquan made a summary of the meeting. (1)Since labor market has changed a lot in recent years, the complexity of situation judgment has gone up, which should be considered in quarterly analysis; (2) Contradictions between the number of labor supply and demand, quality and competency have become more serious, which put negative influences on economic growth and human resources management in companies, and the issue should be an important topic in future research; (3) Employment pressure that comes with new industrial restructuring has shown. Companies in Beijing, Tianjin, Heibei, Suzhou industrial park and traditional industries will be challenged by this issue; (4) In current economic downturn, judgment on employment trend in China should take recessive unemployment into consideration. Neither data released by neither National Bureau of Statistics nor CIER managed to avoid this limit. (5) Related government departments should establish and improve employment indicators, add indicators such as vacancies, employment quality to current survey, and invite specialists to interpret labor market indicators. Finally, Professor Zeng Xiangquan announced the plan of CIER ten-year seminar in April 2015 and invited leaders, specialists and scholars to attend the seminar. At last, he gave thanks again to the support and efforts of the government, enterprises and the academia to the quarterly employment analysis conference. |
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