CCTV News: On January 17, the State Information Office held a press conference on the operation of the national economy in 2024. At the meeting, Fu Linghui, spokesperson of the National Bureau of Statistics and director of the National Economic Comprehensive Statistics Department, said that employment is an issue that everyone is very concerned about. Employment is the foundation of people's livelihood and the source of income. The Party Central Committee is paying great attention to it and always puts stability and expansion of employment at the top of economic and social development. Although the economic operation in 2024 faces many challenges and some enterprises have difficulty in operating, the national economy is generally stable and steady, the scale of the economy is expanding, and the service industry's large employment capacity continues to play. With the development of some new business forms, new models and new industries, the employment driving force is increasing, playing an important role in the stability of employment. At the same time, employment priority policies are continuing to be put in place, and these factors jointly support the overall stability of employment in 2024.

From the overall situation, the national urban surveyed unemployment rate in 2024 has steadily decreased, and the average national urban surveyed unemployment rate in 2024 was 5.1%, down 0.1 percentage point from the previous year. From a quarterly perspective, the four quarters were 5.2%, 5.0%, 5.2%, and 5.0%, respectively, and the overall situation remained basically stable. The average level of urban surveyed unemployment rate of 5.1% in 2024 has been at a relatively low level in recent years, indicating that the employment situation has remained basically stable overall.

From the perspective of key groups, the employment situation of major key groups has improved, such as migrant workers, young people, and people with employment difficulties, which have generally improved. Judging from the situation of migrant workers, in 2024, the average urban surveyed unemployment rate of foreign agricultural households was 4.6%, down 0.3 percentage points from 2023. The total number of migrant workers increased by 2.2 million in 2024, an increase of 0.7%. At the same time, with the end of the graduation season, the employment pressure of young people has eased after July. The surveyed unemployment rate of urban workers aged 16-24 who did not include school students in December fell by 0.4 percentage points compared with the previous month, and it has been a decline for four consecutive months. From the perspective of groups with employment difficulties, by the end of 2024, the scale of employment of people who have been lifted out of poverty in the country has exceeded 33 million, exceeding the annual target task, and exceeding 30 million for four consecutive years.

In the past year, the economy has indeed faced some difficulties, but the ability to maintain stability in employment mainly comes from the expansion of the total economic volume, which inevitably requires corresponding increase in employment. At the same time, the employment capacity of the service industry is relatively large, and the service industry has played a very important role in the stability of employment in recent years. In 2024, the proportion of my country's service industry in GDP continued to increase, an increase of 0.4 percentage points over the previous year, and the proportion of the service industry in GDP reached 56.7%. Judging from the average annual employment in the service industry, the number of people employed in 2024 increased by more than 7 million compared with the previous year. Among them, the number of employment in industries such as wholesale and retail, accommodation and catering, information transmission, leasing and business services has increased significantly. In addition to the expansion of the total economic output and the growth of employment capacity in the service industry, the continued efforts of employment priority policies have played an important role in stabilizing the employment situation. Last year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued the "Opinions on Implementing the Employment Priority Strategy to Promote High-Quality Full Employment", and localities implemented actions to promote employment in advanced manufacturing, and these policies provided important guarantees for stabilizing employment.

It is indeed necessary to see that there are some challenges facing economic operation at present, and the structural contradictions in employment are relatively prominent. Employment of some groups such as young people does face difficulties and pressures. It still requires efforts to stabilize employment. In this regard, the Central Economic Work Conference specifically emphasized "focusing on goal-oriented approach, and focusing on achieving an optimized combination of stable growth, stable employment and reasonable price recovery." In the next stage, to achieve such goals, we must place the promotion of high-quality and full employment in a more prominent position, implement employment support plans for key areas, key industries, urban and rural grassroots and small and medium-sized enterprises, promote employment for key groups, and ensure the overall stability of the overall employment situation.