Recruiting in China

BEIJING: Employment pressure is building in China with an additional 50 million people expected to be hunting for a limited pool of jobs in cities by 2010, state media reported on Friday.

Only 40 million new jobs will be created for urban residents between 2006 and 2010, leaving an additional 10 million people without work, according to a new report by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, the China Daily said. It said the government was striving to maintain the unemployment rate among registered city residents at below five percent.

However, the jobless problem has been exacerbated by a massive influx of rural job seekers who are not registered in cities. China population of migrant workers is estimated at 150 million, or 11.5 per cent of the population, double the figure for a decade ago, the newspaper said.

The migrant workers plus other factors ensure that unemployment would remain a problem for the world most populous country in the years to come, it said.