Skilling people to plug employment gaps

China's current structural employment contradiction has become a focus of attention for people of all walks of life.

At the beginning of this century, the number of highly skilled talents in China accounted for only 4 percent of its total skilled talent pool, but now the proportion is more than 20 percent. Supported by a variety of factors, China is catching up with developed countries when it comes to its share of skilled talent.

However, in recent years, one often comes across phrases such as "difficult to be employed" or "difficult to recruit workers" in the domestic labor market. This is because front-line skilled talents face problems adapting to the requirements of high-quality development.

In the fourth quarter of 2021, 43 of the 100 jobs that badly needed employees were in the manufacturing sector, especially intelligent manufacturing.

To address the shortage of high-quality human capital, China should focus on the supply side, address the shortage of skilled personnel, provide multi-level learning and training opportunities and improve the institutional system for the use, evaluation, selection and stimulation of skilled personnel.

The country should also speed up the construction of a modern vocational education system. In the context of the technological revolution and industrial upgrading, China should promote the integration of industry and education and cooperation between schools and enterprises, and attract more young people to receive vocational and technical education.

This year's Government Work report says that China will continue to carry out large-scale vocational skills training, using 100 billion yuan ($15.72 billion) of unemployment insurance funds to support job stabilization and training courses, accelerate the training of personnel urgently needed for high-quality manufacturing development, and enable more workers to master professional skills. This will help more workers to master professional skills and achieve higher quality employment.