China faces huge employment pressure: Minister

China faces huge employment challenges in 2012 brought by a large number of job seekers and unbalanced job market.

Chinese cities and towns will see 25 million more people joining the workforce this year, half of whom will be university and college graduates, while another 9 to 10 million rural residents will seek jobs away from home, Chinese Minister of Human Resources and Social Security Yin Weimin said on Wednesday.

While college graduates continue to complain of a lack of available jobs, Chinese factories are facing difficulties in recruiting workers and technicians, revealing structural problems in the job market, Yin said at a press conference during the ongoing parliamentary session.

The Chinese government will introduce a package of measures aimed at expanding the job market and training workers, with a special focus on the employment of college graduates and rural migrant workers, state-run Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying.

In a work report released on Monday, Premier Wen Jiabao had said the government aims to create more than 12 million new jobs in cities and towns this year to keep the registered urban unemployment rate below 4.6 per cent.

Last year, China added 12.21 million jobs in cities and towns and registered an urban unemployment rate of 4.1 per cent.