Employment and income are connected to thousands of households. What new measures will be introduced to stabilize employment and promote income growth in 2025? On January 21, at a press conference held by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the heads of relevant departments and bureaus answered three hot issues.

How to stabilize and expand employment?

Employment is the most direct way to increase residents' income. In 2024, 12.56 million new urban jobs were created nationwide, and the scale of working people who were lifted out of poverty reached 33.052 million.

"In the next step, we will anchor the goal of high-quality and full employment, deepen reforms in the employment field, improve employment priority policies, stabilize key employment groups, optimize employment public services, and ensure the stability of the employment situation." Chen Yongjia, deputy director of the Employment Promotion Department of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said.

On January 15, 2025, Feidong County, Hefei City, Anhui Province held a special job fair for the "Welcome the New Year and Start a New Job". Xinhua News Agency (photo by Ruan Xuefeng) Chen Yongjia introduced that in 2025, employment support plans for key areas, key industries, urban and rural grassroots and small and medium-sized enterprises will be implemented, and new growth points for employment will be continuously expanded. At the same time, policies such as job stability refunds, tax incentives, guaranteed loans, and employment subsidies are implemented to help enterprises stabilize jobs and expand jobs.

Employment of college graduates is the top priority. The number of graduates from ordinary colleges and universities in 2025 is expected to reach 12.22 million, an increase of 430,000 year-on-year.

"Next, we will develop more jobs that give full play to the expertise of graduates, strengthen support for small and medium-sized enterprises and social organizations to absorb college graduates, establish a system for collecting and publishing urban and rural grassroots jobs, and promote employment and entrepreneurship for young people through multiple channels." Chen Yongjia said.

One person is employed and the whole family is lifted out of poverty. Currently, there are about 300 million migrant workers nationwide, which is of great significance to promote employment and income increase in migrant workers.

In 2025, the human resources and social security department will take multiple measures to expand employment channels for migrant workers, broaden employment channels for local nearby, and increase county employment capacity; in addition, the employment assistance system will be implemented, and public welfare jobs will be used to provide assistance to ensure that at least one zero-employed family can find employment.

How to promote skills increase?

At present, the total number of skilled talents in my country has exceeded 200 million, accounting for more than 26% of the total number of employed people. However, the total number of skilled talents is still insufficient, especially the supply of high-skilled talents in the employment market is in short supply.

Improving workers' skills can steadily increase income. Migrant workers who have been trained and driven by labor brands have also received much higher wages than ordinary working.

On May 28, 2024, at Xingtai Weili Auto Parts Co., Ltd., a labor brand building unit in Weixian County, Hebei Province, the teacher explained the operation knowledge of CNC machine tools to the students. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Wang Xiao

"In 2025, we will focus on industries such as health care, advanced manufacturing, modern services, and new occupations with large employment capacity and prominent supply and demand contradictions, focusing on migrant workers, unemployed college graduates, registered unemployed people, and groups with employment difficulties, etc., to carry out large-scale vocational skills training to improve workers' employment ability and promote their stable income growth." Lu Aihong, spokesperson of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, introduced.

In order to highlight incentives and guarantees and enhance the attractiveness of skilled employment, the "Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Implementing the Employment Priority Strategy to Promote High-Quality Full Employment" released in September 2024 clearly requires "dynamic release of salary and price information for skilled talents to guide enterprises to gradually increase the salary and benefits of skilled talents."

The reporter learned that in the next step, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security will build a skill-oriented salary distribution system, carry out collective wage negotiations in areas and industries where skilled talents are gathered, implement salary distribution guidelines for skilled talents, and promote the implementation of the starting point salary system for skilled talents, so that those who work more can get more, and those who have higher skills can get more.

How to promote the people to reduce burdens and increase income?

The more pressure the economic development is, the more we must protect the bottom line of people's livelihood and strengthen social security.

In 2024, the human resources and social security department paid a total of 24.77 million people in need to pay basic pension insurance premiums for urban and rural residents, and distributed 121.4 billion yuan of various types of unemployment insurance benefits to unemployed people, such as basic medical insurance and maternity insurance premiums.

In 2025, while guiding local governments to implement social security assistance policies, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security will improve the social security system and improve social security benefits to reduce workers' worries with more full and reliable social security.

Lu Aihong said that in 2025, the basic pension for retirees will be appropriately increased, and more tilted towards middle- and low-income groups; the basic pension for urban and rural residents will be increased, and the pilot program of standardized collective subsidies will be actively promoted, and the level of payment and financing will be improved through multiple channels, so as to improve the level of urban and rural residential insurance benefits.

Wage is the main source of income for workers. "We will focus on increasing the proportion of labor remuneration in primary distribution, strengthen macro-guidance and regulation of wages, and promote a reasonable and stable growth of people's wage income." Lu Aihong said.

He said that in the next step, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security will guide local governments to reasonably adjust the minimum wage standard, gradually increase the proportion of minimum wage in the social average wage; increase the guidance on the salary distribution of key industries and key groups; deepen the reform of the salary system of state-owned enterprises, guide enterprises to establish and improve the distribution mechanism for all types of talents to determine salary based on their performance contribution, and increase incentives for backbone personnel of scientific and technological innovation. (Reporters Jiang Lin, Han Jianuo)