Unemployment still a struggle for young adults

Young people still face the pressure of landing jobs with the unemployment rate remaining high in the past month, said the National Bureau of Statistics.

According to latest figures from the NBS on Thursday, the surveyed unemployment rate of young people aged between 16 to 24 years old saw a slight increase to 20.8 percent in May, while the number was 20.4 percent in April.

Fu Linghui, spokesman of the NBS, said at a news conference on Thursday in Beijing that the whole job market is bearing pressure because of the increasing labor forces and the structure imbalance of the market demand and workforce supply.

As to the increasing surveyed unemployment rate of young people, he explained that while the nation has roughly 96 million young people aged between 16 to 24 as of May, many of them are still in school.

"Out of the 96 million young people, about 1/3 of them - 33 million, are labor forces entering the job market," he said, "and among the 33 million young labor forces, about 26 million have landed their jobs so far, so we have roughly 6 million young people who remained unemployed."

He said that with the economic situation in upturn, the employment will get a more stable and stronger support.