‘China jobless situation grim’

“Unemployment will continue to be a major issue for China in the coming years,” told a news conference on the sidelines of parliament.

“The situation is grim.” The government has bankrolled debts that failed state-owned plants owed to millions of ex-employees and pensioners, begun to repair the frayed social safety net and offered incentives to private businesses to soak up the jobless. But analysts and officials acknowledge it could take years to uproot the seeds of protest that saw tens of thousands of laid-off workers protest two years ago just as Parliament was meeting. In the old northeast industrial bastion, Liaoning province’s new welfare and pension Pilot will spread to the neighbouring provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang this year. But it would take “several years” before the heavilysubsidised fund could “run normally”, Zheng said. —(Reuters)