On April 10, 2020, China’s First Quarterly Employment Review was successfully held online by China Institute for Employment Research (CIER). Yin Jiankun, Deputy Director-General of Employment Promotion Department, Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, Cai Ying, Deputy Director-General of Unemployment Insurance Department, Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, Jing Ming, Director of Comprehensive Department in Ministry of Finance, Wu Shan, Director of Department of Population and Employment Statistics, Chen Jia, director of Human Resources Research and Development Center in Suzhou Industrial Park, Li Qiang, Executive Vice President of Zhaopin, Wang Yixin, Executive Director of Public Relations of Zhaopin, Xu Fei, a Researcher in Ali Research Institute, Ge Ling, Director of Government Affairs in 58.com, Li Yan, Dean of Recruitment Data Institute in 58.com, Jing Ye, General Manager of  Social Responsibility and Public Relations Development Center in JOYY Inc, Zhang Xintang, Vice President of 51haohuo.com and other leaders and guests of government and enterprises, 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), Ding Dajian and Geng Lin, Researchers of CIER and Professor, Wang Ting, Part-time Researcher of China Institute for Employment Research, Director of Human Resources Development and Management Research Center in China University of Political Science and Law, more than 30 researchers participated in the conference chaired by Wang Fei, Associate Professor of SLHR.

At the beginning of the conference, Director Zeng Xiangquan made a speech in which he expressed his sincere thanks and gave his own warm welcome to the guests. He then introduced the background and main contents about the conference and briefly generalized the new analysis report related to the fresh graduates’ employment situations. Finally, he hoped that the conference held in the special period could provide practical help for all guests.

Associate Professor Geng Lin provided a report entitled “2020 First Quarterly Analysis of Employment Situation—Based on Big Data of Zhaopin”. The report firstly analyzed the overall employment situation in the first quarter of 2020, and then further analyzed the employment situation in different industries and occupations, different regions and cities, different enterprise scales and different enterprise nature. The report pointed out that the CIER index affected by Covid-19 in the first quarter of 2020 showed a seasonal rollback, falling from 2.18 in the previous quarter to 1.43 in the first quarter, due to the demand of recruitment and the application in jobs decreased by 28.45% and 8.73% compare to the previous quarter. In March, the CIER index fell to 1.02, which was a low record of the index. Compared with the similar period last year（1.68）, it decreased, owing to the number of applicants decreased by 22.61% and the number of job applicants decreased by 9.38%. Affected by Covid-19, the enterprises had difficulties in production and operation, labor mobility has declined and the labor market suffered. In the aspect of different industries, the degree of polarization among different industries increased. Compared with the previous quarter, the CIER index in most industries declined, due to the decrease in the number of applicants and the increase in the number of job applicants. Among them, due to the increase of recruitment demand, the CIER index of entertainment / sports / leisure industries increased from 2.99 to 3.13. In the rank of CIER index, the index of education/training/institutions industries have raised to the first place ,which represented these industries had the best employment situation; intermediary service industry dropped to second place; the employment situation were also relative better in insurance, professional services/consulting and internet/e-commerce industries. However, energy/ mineral/ excavation/ smelting, printing/ packaging/ papermaking and electrical/ electric-power/ water industries were still in poor employment situation and in a fiercely competitive market. As for different occupations, with higher employment market sentiment index in the first quarter of 2020, the occupations were still technicians/operators, cooking/food/food research and development, education/training, sales operations, community/ resident/ housekeeping service, etc. Occupations with low employment prosperity index were still property management, IT management/project coordination, public relations/media, trust/guarantee/auction/pawn, sales administration/business, project management/ project coordination, senior management, etc. Regionally, the middle region had the largest CIER index, which was ahead of the eastern region, and it was different from the previous decreasing trend in eastern, middle and western China respectively. Meanwhile, affected by the decreasing number of applicants and the increasing number of job applicants, the CIER index declined seasonally quarter-on-quarter. The CIER index in Jing-Jin-Ji Area where still had a tighter job market showed a seasonal rollback, but the CIER index raised up compared to the same period last year; The employment situation were still relatively better and the CIER index showed a seasonal rollback quarter-on-quarter in Yangtze River Delta region, where the CIER index declined compared to the same season in 2019 ,while the CIER index of Pearl River Delta region had an opposite tendency. Dividing the area into southern and northern regions, in most of time, the CIER index in south has been significantly higher than north since the first quarter in 2015. From the perspective of cities, the CIER index were still small in first-tier cities in the first quarter of 2020 and were large in second and third tier cities. In terms of enterprise scales, the CIER index of large enterprises was relatively high in this quarter, while the CIER index of medium, small and micro enterprises was relatively low. Whereas, because of coronavirus, the CIER index in large and medium enterprises declined compared to the same period last year , but it remained in the same lever in small and micro enterprises. In terms of enterprises types, in this quarter, the employment situation was better in private sector, but worse in state-owned enterprises. The report predicted that there is a great possibility that the CIER index would be slightly higher than it in the first quarter of 2019, but lower than it in the same period last year, if there would be smooth returning to work and recovery production in the second quarter. Considering the current complex international pandemic situation, the development prospects of other economies are not clear, and foreign trade exports are in a disadvantageous situation, there would be the great uncertainty in the employment situation in the second quarter.

Chen Jia, director of Human Resources Research and Development Center in Suzhou Industrial Park delivered a speech entitled the “Report on Human Resources Situation in Suzhou Industrial Park in the First Quarter of 2020". The report mainly included the human resources index of Suzhou Industrial Park, the characteristics of human resources in Suzhou Industrial Park in the first quarter of 2020, and she forecasted the human resources of Suzhou Industrial Park in the second quarter. The reporter indicated that the recruitment of enterprises was reduced, and the blue-collar workers postponed their work resumption, and the conflict of structural mismatch was occurred between the demand of recruitment and the supply of labors. The difficult phenomenon in labor market would occurs, which called “difficulty in recruitment, shortage of labor”. In the aspect of different industries, the most severely affected industries were service industries. In contrast to that, Covid-19 could promote restructuring and upgrading in high-tech industry, which could become a new economic growth point. Because of the downtrend in performance , enterprises took some different steps to adjust compensation scheme, such as increasing pay or freezing pay. Moreover, 20.45% enterprises reduced the number of aurhorized employees, resulting in the increase of passive turnover rate of relative employees. According to the survey results, mostly blue-collar workers returned to Suzhou in the early March, and few of them delayed or refused to return back to work, and they expressed negative perspectives about their incomes and more than half of them thought the industry sluggish and expected the lower incomes. What’s more, although most of enterprises has begun to comeback, their capacity has not been fully restored, since the low efficiency of supply chain logistics of raw materials, the barrier of returning to Suzhou of blue-collar works and so on.

Mao Yufei, Associate Researchers of CIER and assistant professor Capital University of Economics and Business, made a report entitled “An analysis of employment expectation and employment experience of college graduates under the impact of the epidemic”. He has pointed five relative contents, which included the overall employment situation of college graduates, the introduction of network survey sample, analysis of the employment expectation of college graduates, analysis of job applications and the impact of the epidemic on the employment of college graduates. On the basement of big data about identification of college graduates on recruitment, combined with the data of network survey, the report analyzed the employment situation of college graduates. According to the analysis of data, the CIER index of college graduates in the first quarter of 2020 was 1.38, which was lower than that on the national level. Compared with last quarter, the CIER index of college graduate showed seasonal rollback; compared with similar period last year, affected by both the coronavirus and downward pressure on the economy, the CIER index of college graduate fell obviously, since the decrease in the number of applicants and the increase in the number of job applicants. In the aspect of different industries, the industries where college graduates had better employment situation was the same as the national industries of better employment; however, the situation of industries with worse employment situation was contrary. As for different occupations, affected by the demand and supply of national talents, the occupations of overall employment trend of college graduates were included in the report named “Top 100 jobs where talents are not widely available”, which was delivered by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. The CIER index in biologicals/ pharmaceutic/ healthcare device occupations were higher; Among some occupations of worse employment prospects, the CIER index in such hardware development, finance/accounting audit/ tax, lawyer/ justice/ compliance occupations were lower, since the fierce competition in these careers caused by the increase in the number of college graduates. Regionally, the CIER index in the first quarter of 2020 still showed a trend of decreasing in the northeastern, central, eastern, western regions. The CIER index in Jing-Jin-Ji Area was relatively lower, Yangtze River Delta Pearl River Delta had an obvious decrease in the CIER index. From the perspective of cities, the employment situation was better in second and third tier cities in the first quarter of 2020 and the competition was fierce in first-tier and new first-tier cities. In terms of enterprise scales, the CIER index of large enterprises was relatively high in this quarter, while the CIER index of medium, small and micro enterprises was relatively low. In terms of enterprises types, in this quarter, the employment situation was better in private sector, but worse in state-owned enterprises. With an analysis of career expectations of college graduates, it showed that the graduates were more inclined to find employment in first-tier or new first-tier cities and expected to enter new economic industries such as the Internet, culture / media / entertainment, business services, and finance. Unit employment was the main destination of graduate employment, and more graduates expected to enter state-owned enterprises and private enterprises. In “Double First-Class” university, the proportion of graduates that entered in next higher school was relatively higher. The analysis of salary expectation showed that there were differences in the salary expectation of graduates between different cities and schools. Graduates with higher educated degree expected higher salary. Among the many factors influencing job selection, graduates were most concerned about salary and welfare (60.8%), learning new things (45.5%), career development (30.9%), work life balance (30.5%), industry / company prospect (29.3%). According to the survey results, graduates applying for jobs would be in peak season of job-hunting in the second half of the year. Most of them thought that internship was helpful for job-hunting, whose average time of internship was about 5 months and the average number of sending resumes was about 21. There were differences between graduates with different academic qualifications, majors and universities in job applications. More than half of them thought that the employment situation would be negative because of coronavirus. The industries, places and occupations that graduates expected would be affected by the pandemic, online job interview would become the major ways of job applications for graduates during the pandemic.

During the keynote speech and the discussion section, the experts and leaders from government conducted the extensive and in-depth discussions on the third quarterly employment situations and the future development trends. Yin Jiankun, Deputy Director-General of Employment Promotion Department, Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, Cai Ying, Deputy Director-General of Unemployment Insurance Department, Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, and Wu Shan, Director of Department of Population and Employment Statistics, all made the excellent comments and analyzed the reports.

Wang Yixin, Executive Director of Public Relations of Zhaopin shared a series of data about work resumption. From January to March, the shape of online recruiting trend is as the letter “V”, where the lowest point occurred in February and the level of demand in March recovered basically as it in January. With the impact of coronavirus is gradually weaken, the confidences of job seekers were getting back and the number of resumes delivered increased. As the survey of white-collar workers showed, compared with the obstacles to the development of career, macro situation of this year made the strongest impact on the confidence of them.

Xu Fei, Researcher in Ali Research Institute introduced the relevant circumstance of sharing employees during coronavirus. Affected by COVID-19, the amount of costumers dining at restaurants reduced sharply, but the demand of daily necessities significantly increased in fresh industries, FMCG(fast moving consumer goods), supermarket and so on. Whereas, work resumption can't back to normal in short time in catering industries. Therefore, in order to solve the problem of workforce crunch in enterprises and maximize the value of individual staff, Fresh HEMA stimulated the docking of catering and fresh industries and shared labor time, skills, instruments, personal influence and other comprehensive labor capacities. Researcher Xu indicated that sharing employees also had some problems in the whole operations, including treatment, social security insurance, laws and regulations and training. He hoped that relevant 

Li Yan, Dean of Recruitment Data Institute in 58.com, summarized the mutual change between enterprises and blue-collar job applicants, and pointed out the changes along with demand and supply in different industries, occupations and regions during the epidemic. These figures showed that wholesale and retail industry revived limitedly because work resumption were not complete and there was a significant demand for jobs of courier and sorter in logistics storage which was strongly driven by the consumer side. What’s more, she argued that, according to the results monitored by 58.com in Hubei province and Wuhan, the number of applicants has increased distinctly raised in Jianghan District and Caidian District. Meanwhile, in labor demand of information technology industry, the demand of applicants in I.T. infrastructure and services and other occupations have increased. Therefore, she predicted the number of job applicants and applicants would recover as the epidemic weakened.

Jing Ye, General Manager of Social Responsibility and Public Relations Development Center in JOYY Inc, shared the experience in online sales which transferred from offline, and mentioned the mode of “Live Broadcast +”, which was shaped by the combination between the special wholesale industry (such as clothing industry) and live industry, not only drove the transformation of related industries, but also created some jobs.

Zhang Xintang, Vice President of 51haohuo.com, introduced that their platform solved the matching of demand and supply in human resources, financial financing and other problems in work resumption and formed a typical application case, which based on good use of new generation information technology, for instance, big data and blockchain. 51haohuo.com platform has completed the construction of the full service system this year, such as flexible employment of human resources, blue collar recruitment, Internet plus government services, financial services, security services, legal advisory services, and so on, which made every effort to make the flexible job market more standardized and more legal. By promoting the change of flexible employment concept, they provided enterprises with multi-dimensional and diversified employment methods, and enhanced their ability to resist risks.

Professor Wang Ting in China University of Political Science and Law mainly analyzed the impact of the epidemic on the employment of college students and believed that there were problems such as high employment pressure and increased cost of job search. With the historical highest employment pressure, graduates in 2020 also faced the increased number of overseas students returning to China because of coronavirus, which made the employment pressure more severe. In addition, measures and policies such as online guidance and defense of graduation thesis, uncertainty of graduation time, and online interview of enterprises increased the psychological pressure of students' employment. At present, colleges should not only strengthen the employment of graduates to ensure the employment rate, but also be alert to the problems of sacrificing certain employment quality which could affect the long-term career development of college students.

Ding Dajian, researchers of China Institute for Employment Research, indicated that they would enhance unilateral analysis to describe the changes in labor market, since the results of inhibition form two sides(demand and supply) which reflected in CIER index were not obvious. Secondly, graduate employment was a rigid problem and the development and changes in economy, strengthening in online employment and sharing economy would inevitably make a large impact on graduates. Finally, as a mode of flexible employment, sharing employee which was enabling to maximize the value of human resources, was a new matching formation of labor demand and labor supply, whose employment pattern should be continuously completed in system standardization.

Zhang Chenggang, part-time Researcher of China Institute for Employment Research, director of China New Employment Pattern Research Center in Capital Economic and Trade University,  gave his experience and views. He approved the unilateral analysis proposed by Ding Dajian. He thought that if sharing employees could developed better, proper human resources service provider should be introduced to help it avoid risks which would be met in long term. College students were faced with great employment pressure, but the phenomenon of "delayed employment" was also very prominent. He also hoped to strengthen research on small and medium-sized enterprises and the individually-owned companied.

At the end of the conference, Director Zeng Xiangquan made a brief summary of the contents of this conference and discussed some of his understanding and ideas on hot issues. He pointed that CIER would strengthen the density of data analysis, shorten the analysis period and improve the timeliness of release because employment situation has been a highly concerned problem by all sectors of society. From his perspectives, government should strengthen policy guidance, deal with the relationship between investment and employment correctly and introduce the evaluation mechanism of employment creation of investment projects. In his opinion, government should also be determined to increase the investment of human capital, establish a sound information system of job openings and pay attention to the implement and timely modification of Employment Promotion Law of the People's Republic of China. Finally, he sincerely thanked all sectors of society for their support and help to the work of the China Institute for Employment Research during the special period and he looked forward to the next meeting in the second quarterly review.