This city will soon complete its goal of creating a full-time job for at least one member of every out-of-work family, officials said.

Shi Juemin, a vice-director of the Shanghai municipal labor and social security bureau, said the city is on target to offer jobs to people who are of legal working age and are able to work.

"Members of more than 7,100 jobless families in Shanghai have found employment, and the remaining 30 families are on a waiting list," Shi said during an interview on the bureau's online chatting program. "And they will soon have jobs."

Shi did not give a deadline.

The city's government has launched several job-creation drives since 1997.

Neighborhoods have set up their own unemployment databases and offer job ideas to people according to their individual needs. The unemployed will either be given work according to their qualifications or will receive job training.

The government has set up training centers, organized job fairs and guided the unemployed into newly created public sector posts such as crossing guards, sanitation workers and parking lot or community security guards.

According to a labor bureau report released earlier this year, Shanghai's government had "bought" - or created and paid for - 240,000 jobs by the end of last year.

Hiring people as nurses or home care providers for the aged will have the additional benefit of helping the government deal with the city's rapidly aging population.

By the end of last year, the city's unemployment rate was 4.4 percent.

And a new law that is in the pipeline is expected to improve employment services. The law will assign responsibility for creating employment and forbid discrimination against women and people with diseases.

"Companies will have to clearly state the salary when hiring people," Shi said.

And employers will have to be very careful with their recruitment advertisements. Cheats will be fined.

(China Daily November 20, 2007)