On October 18, 2018, the 10th anniversary of Quarterly Review of Employment in China and Situation Seminar of the third quarter of 2018 was successfully held by China Institute for Employment Research(CIER) at First Meeting Room in Yifu Hall, Renmin University of China. Zhang Xiaojian, President of China Association of Employment Promotion and former Vice Minister of National Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, Liu Yuanchun, Vice President of Renmin University of China, Yu Faming, Vice President of China Association of Employment Promotion and former Director of Employment Promotion Department, National Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, Yin Jiankun, Deputy Director of Employment Promotion Department, National Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, Zhang Zhibin, Deputy Director of Department of population and employment statistics, National Bureau of Statistics, Professor Klaus F Zimmermann, founder of Global Labor Organization, former Director of the German National Institute of Economics and Director of Institute of Labor Economics, Professor Li Shi, Executive Director of China Institute for Income Distribution, Yangtze River Scholar and Professor of Beijing Normal University, Professor Zeng Xiangquan, former Dean of School of Labor and Human Resources (SLHR), Renmin University of China, Director of China Institute for Employment Research (CIER) and Yangtze River Scholar, Professor Tang Kuang, Party Secretary and Assistant Dean of School of Labor and Human Resources, Renmin University of China, Guo Sheng, Chief Executive Officer of Zhilian Zhao Pin, Li Qiang, Senior Marketing Director of Zhilian Zhao Pin, Zhang Xiaoguang, General Manager of Human Resources Research and Development Center in Suzhou Industrial Park, Ge Ling, Director of government affairs department, 58.com, Zhu Jiang, Chief Executive Officer of 51haohuo.com etc., more than 60 experts and scholars from various universities, enterprises and institutions participated in the meeting, which was hosted by Professor Tang Kuang. 

At the beginning of the meeting, Professor Tang Kuang read out the congratulatory letter from Professor Liu Wei, President of Renmin University of China, to the 10th anniversary of Quarterly Review of Employment in China. In the letter, President Liu Wei expressed his sincere congratulations to CIER. He further pointed out that "relying on School of Labor and Human Resources, CIER is devoted to the research of employment issues, provides timely reference for decision-making, actively promotes industry-university cooperation, and comprehensively carries out international exchanges, CIER has become the important forefront of China's employment research and the benchmark of employment policy discussions." He finally expressed his hope for CIER to shoulder the heavy burden and make greater achievements. 

Vice President Liu Yuanchun highlighted his views on employment measurement and statistics in the analysis of macroeconomic situation, as well as his views and suggestions on further research work of CIER in the future. He referred that basing on the big data of Internet recruitment like Zhilian recruitment, CIER carries out the quarterly analysis and forecast of employment, which compensates for the deficiency of traditional employment statistics, and is a good supplement to the official employment statistics of the National Bureau of Statistics. He highly praised the research work and achievements of Professor Zeng Xiangquan, and has great hopes for the entire research team he leads. 

In the phase of keynote report, Professor Zeng Xiangquan delivered a speech entitled "Never Forget Your Initial Heart, Move Forward - Review and Prospect of Data Analysis of the Ten-Year Employment". He highlighted the founding background of CIER in 2004, as well as the major research work and achievements made by CIER since its establishment. In the first stage, four influential research report of China's employment strategy were completed. Among them, "The Changing Employment Environment and the Employment of College Students" was published in the "Economic Research" in 2004, which is by far the most cited literature in the employment field. "Market-oriented Measurement of Employment and Unemployment in China" won the first prize of outstanding achievements in philosophy and social sciences in Beijing. Research papers on "Labor Market Intermediary and Employment Promotion" were published in the International Labour Review and others. After the outbreak of the international financial crisis in 2008, in order to compensate the prominent problem of insensitivity to the registered unemployment rate and improve the accuracy and timeliness of the judgment of the employment situation in the labor market, the research focus has shifted from the long-term study on employment strategy to the short-term analysis and forecast of the degree of labor market prosperity. With the vigorous assistance of the Department of Employment Promotion of Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, Department of Population and Employment of National Bureau of Statistics, Department of Employment and Income Distribution of the National Development and Reform Commission, and other government departments, more than 40 quarterly analysis conferences of Chinese employment have been held continuously and uninterruptedly, and nearly 40 issues of "Quarterly Report of Chinese employment" have been published to provide reference for decision-making of the relevant government departments. In particular, by using the big data of ZhiLian employment, CIER developed The China Employment Market Prosperity Index, which is called CIER index for short and has a significant impact at home and abroad. In recent years, many research achievements of CIER have been highly affirmed by the Party, government and international organizations and others. Among them, the report on the analysis of China's employment situation received the important instructions of General Secretary Xi Jinping, and the report on the employment problems caused by the reduction of production capacity in Shanxi Province was approved by Vice-Premier Liu He. On January 13, 2017, Professor Zeng Xiangquan was invited to attend the expert forum on the "Report of Government Work(Draft for Consultation)", which was chaired by Premier Li Keqiang. He was also invited to speak at the forum and presented in detail the research achievement of CIER using big data analysis, which were fully recognized. Since its foundation, CIER has actively promoted its internationalization, and accepted many important research projects entrusted by International Labour Organization, World Bank, Asian Development Bank and Macao SAR Government and others. The research on the implementation and evaluation mechanism of employment policy, the study on youth employment, the employment strategy of the 13th Five-Year Plan, the non-standard employment of China and the salary adjustment mechanism for civil servants of the Macao SAR Government, have all obtained influential results and received favorable comments. Facing the new situation and new tasks, Professor Zeng Xiangquan said that CIER will, as always, gives full play to its advantages and characteristics, attaches importance to infrastructure construction such as job classification and indicator system in employment research, continues to focus on the analysis of prosperity fluctuations of job market, plays the role of macro-warning and decision-making advisory, and properly expands the cooperation between local governments and enterprises, deepen the mining of big data, refines the release content of prosperity index report, promotes international cooperation and exchange of big data in employment, and cultivates high-level talents for the analysis of big data in employment.

Each guest gave a wonderful speech.

Guo Sheng, CEO of Zhilian recruitment, expressed his admiration for the persistent spirit of CIER led by Professor Zeng Xiangquan in academic research and the unique market position of the research results made by CIER. He thought that CIER index and other achievements would help people return to rational thinking, correctly understand and judge the current employment situation, have great value and significance for the government and enterprises to make scientific decisions.

Deputy Director Yin Jiankun conveyed the congratulations of Zhang Yizhen, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, on the 10th anniversary of Quarterly Review of Employment in China, and expressed his sincere thanks to CIER for its long-term support and assistance to the work of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. He reviewed the achievements made by CIER from four aspects: first, the establishment of the coordination mechanism between employment and macro-economy, the exploration of relevance of macroeconomic indicators of employment and the establishment of CIER index, all of them pioneered the field of employment research and had important reference value for government decision-making. Secondly, CIER index can objectively reflect the changing trend of market, which is an important vane for the analysis of employment situation, and has certain positive impact at home and abroad. Thirdly, each situation seminar will make special research on the key, difficult and hot issues of each period, including theoretical research and policy analysis, as well as guidance for practical work. Fourthly, the collaboration among universities, research institutions, government departments and social human resources service agencies has important guiding significance for practical work, especially the analysis of CIER index provides important support for government decision-making.

Deputy Director Zhang Zhibin thought that the work of CIER has great value. He said that Quarterly Review of Employment in China can provide a lot of useful and important results and information.

Vice President Yu Faming highly praised the unremitting efforts of CIER over the past decade, especially the long-term commitment to quarterly employment analysis, and referred to the contribution made by the team led by Professor Zeng Xiangquan in 2008 when government needed advice for decision-making in the face of the financial crisis. He expressed his gratitude to the team for their support and contribution to national macro decision-making.

Professor Klaus F Zimmermann said that CIER has become an important force in China and even the world in the field of economic analysis, and the academic leader of employment research and policy discussions as a think tank. He thought that the Quarterly Review of Employment is an innovative meeting, while CIER index has established its own value and is widely used at home and abroad. Finally, he highly praised Professor Zeng Xiangquan and congratulated CIER for its brilliant achievements.

Professor Li Shi expressed his delight in participating in Quarterly Review of Employment for the first time, and thought that the first decade of research was the most difficult period. It was admirable that Professor Zeng Xiangquan had led the team to overcome many difficulties and made various outstanding achievements. In the aspect of employment research, the team led by Professor Zeng Xiangquan is the best in China, with authority both at home and abroad.

In his concluding speech, President Zhang Xiaojian said that quarterly analysis of employment has been developed along with the reform and development of employment in China, to which it has made great contributions. He warmly congratulated CIER on its work and success, expressed his sincere gratitude to CIER for its role and contribution over the past decade, and mentioned that the large amount of effective data accumulated by CIER, especially the innovation of the index system, has great value to the research of employment and related aspects. As the supplement to official statistics, the research results have important reference for making more timely and sensitive response to the first-line situation of the human resources market and the analysis and decision-making of the entire employment situation. Finally, he put forward his hopes and suggestions for the future work of CIER. One of them is to enrich the data, especially to get more accurate judgments and conclusions by using various big data analysis. Secondly, according to the new situation and new characteristics of employment, to supplement the important data missing from the government by using big data, to help the government to judge the situation and provide work decision of the next stage. Thirdly, to give more support to CIER and cultivate more talents for statistics and big data.

For the theme report statement, Associate Professor Geng Lin gave the keynote report entitled “The Analysis of Employment Situation in the Third Quarter of 2018”. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the number of job seekers of the third quarter declined by 24.37%, the number of recruitment demand declined by 20.79%. the CIER index was 1.97, higher than the data of the previous two quarters(1.91 and 1.88). Analyzing data from the same period, due to the decrease of 27% in recruitment demand and 9.86% in job application, the CIER index was lower than the level in the same period of last year (2.43). For the first time, both the number of job applicants and the number of recruitment demand decreased year on year. For industries, influenced by the sharp drop of the number of recruitment demand, the rankings of the Internet and e-commerce sector fell, while that of hotels/restaurants/medical bioengineering increased. The CIER index of energy / mineral / smelting / printing / newspaper industries still remained low, but it has increased compared with the previous quarter. For regions, the CIER index showed a decreasing trend in the eastern, central, western and northeastern regions. For the tier of cities, the third quarter of 2018 CIER index showed an increasing trend in the first, new first, second and third tier cities. For the size of enterprises, the CIER index of large and medium-sized enterprises increased significantly, while the rise of small and micro enterprises was relatively small. Using the econometric model to predict the CIER index of the fourth quarter of 2018, it shows that the periodic component will continue to decline since the fourth quarter of 2017. Due to seasonal factors, the CIER index may rebound in the fourth quarter of 2018, but lower than the level of the same period in last year.

General manager Zhang Xiaoguang delivered a speech entitled "Report on Human Resources Situation in Suzhou Industrial Park in the Third Quarter of 2018”. This report mainly introduced the current employment situation of Suzhou Industrial Park under the background of Sino-US trade war. The report analyzed the human resources index and market data of the whole park, the impact of Sino-US trade friction on the park enterprises, and the survey of the starting salary of graduates in the park. He mentioned that since the beginning of Sino-US trade friction, the demand for labor has not changed greatly, while the supply showed a gentle downward. The matching index of the third quarter is 52%, which is the lowest in history, and some enterprises have large labor gaps. For human resource demand, Sino-US trade friction have little impact on the entire park, but for differentiation, small and medium-sized enterprises are more vulnerable to shocks and more responsive than large enterprises.

Mao Yufei，Research Assistant of CIER, introduced the research report titled "The Impact of Sino-US Trade War on The Recruitment Demand of Enterprises", which is carried out by the research group of CIER. The data of the report came from an online survey conducted by Zhaopin recruitment website. The report mainly analyzed the general characteristics of the surveyed enterprises, the characteristics of companies that trade with the United States, and the impact of the Sino-U.S. trade war on the recruitment demand of enterprises, etc. It showed that Sino-US trade war had more obvious impact on the recruitment demand of companies that trade with the United States and the enterprises in Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Shandong Province and other areas. For the size of enterprises, the increase in US tariffs may inhibit the growth of the recruitment demand for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. For industries, the growth of the recruitment demand in manufacturing industries will be curbed, such as agricultural and sideline food processing, paper-making and paper products, metal products and electrical machinery and equipment.

During the keynote speech and the discussion section, the leaders and experts conducted the extensive and in-depth discussions on the second quarter employment situations and the future development trends.

President Zhang Xiaojian, Vice President Yu Faming, Deputy Director Yin Jiankun, Deputy Director Zhang Zhibin and Jian Chengzhang made excellent commented and analyzed those above reports on the basis of relevant works.

Professor Li Shi put forward the problem of selective bias in the investigation, and the convergence of index changes. He thought that the actual changes in demand should be mainly analyzed, and suggested that changes in enterprise demand should be quantified to obtain more accurate information.

Based on the data collected by various platforms, Director Li Qiang, Director Ge Ling and CEO Zhu Jiang put forward their summary and thoughts.

Finally, Professor Zeng Xiangquan gave a summary of the seminar.

He thought that one of the reasons for the change of China's employment from the aggregate quantity contradiction to the structural contradiction is related to the obstacles in the labor market system and others. Although the contradictions in the employment structure is obvious, aggregation problems caused by the shrinking demand for labor should also be paid enough attention in the future. He also expressed his views on the profound changes in China's labor market, such as rising levels of ageing and declining participation rates. He hopes to continue to strengthen cooperation with more Internet companies in the future, deeply analyze the relevant data and comprehensively build the big data analysis system for employment market. He expressed his sincere thanks to all walks of life for their great support and assistance to the CIER over the years. He hoped that all kinds of major issues in Chinese market can be deeply discussed through this platform, make more achievements in the future, and continue to work for the construction of world-class think tank for employment research.