People swarm to a job fair at the China International Exhibition Center in Beijing. The two-day fair started on Friday. [China Daily]

Job seekers in China will face an uphill battle in the coming months and as many as 12 million may not find work this year even if the country hits its 8 percent growth target, the nation's top employment official said on Friday.

Yin Weimin, minister of human resources and social security, said China will be able to provide openings for about half of its 24 million job hunters, if it meets the growth target for 2009.

"The shortfall between supply and demand (in employment) will become larger than last year due to the failure to create enough job opportunities," he said in a report carried in People's Daily.

The country is trying to meet the "very tough" challenge of finding enough jobs for workers at a time when the global financial crisis is biting deep into the Chinese economy and the employment rate within export-oriented enterprises is falling sharply, he said.

Yin noted that China had hoped the service industry would play a larger role in creating employment, but that has not happened.

According to ministry statistics, 6.6 million people in urban areas found jobs between January and July, some 74 percent of the target of 9 million jobs during the period.

There was a slight increase in job-creation in the second quarter and the urban unemployment rate remained steady at 4.3 percent.

The ministry hopes to keep the urban unemployment rate below 4.6 percent this year, which, while better than many other countries around the world, would still be the highest since 1980.

Cui Chuanyi, a researcher with the Development Research Center of the State Council, told China Daily on Friday that the global economic downturn will bring more employment challenges in the second half of the year.

"The employment market will face a bigger crush in the third quarter with the return flow of migrant workers," he said. "About 90 percent of unemployed migrant workers, who went back to their rural hometowns, could not find jobs and they will choose to return to the big cities again in the coming few months," he said.

Around 22 million migrant workers, who make up most of the workforce in the labor-intensive industries, lost their jobs because of the global financial crisis, he said.

"Another five to six million graduates from middle school in rural areas will also join in this migrant workers' return flow in the third quarter," he said.

Cui also noted that the National Bureau of Statistics had earlier said that more rural migrant workers found jobs in cities in the second quarter, up by nearly 4 million from the first quarter.

Another expert said the government's job-creation efforts were having a positive impact.

"The situation is getting better due to the package of governmental policies to stimulate the economy," Zhang Xiulan, chief of the School of Social Development and Public Policy under Beijing Normal University, told China Daily on Friday.

"Many factories in the coastal region have recovered and received more orders, particularly the export-oriented enterprises in Wenzhou and Shenzhen," she said.

Wang Dewen, an expert with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told China Daily that creating enough jobs for the unemployed was about more than promoting economic growth.

"The employment rate is a promise for social stability, which is the base for better economic development," he said.

He suggested that the government increase investment in small- and medium-sized enterprises in an attempt to stimulate more job growth.

(China Daily August 22, 2009)