Chinese Premier Promises to Create 10 Million Jobs In 2015

January 27, 2015 Share Print 0

China’s Premier Li Keqiang pledged to create at least 10 million new jobs in 2015, the state run China Daily newspaper said on Tuesday, despite economic growth that slowed to its weakest pace in nearly a quarter of a century last year.

Beijing views healthy employment levels as a top policy priority and an important condition for social stability. Last year the country created around 13 million jobs.

“Stress tests show the possibility of a large amount of unemployment, which could lead to social instability if the economy cools down too fast,” Li said at a meeting with economic experts and business leaders on Monday, the newspaper said.

China’s economy grew at its slowest pace in 24 years in 2014 as property prices cooled and companies and local governments struggled under heavy debt burdens, pressuring Beijing to take aggressive steps to avoid a sharper downturn.

A weakening jobs market would raise alarm bells for the government as it ratchets up efforts, including an interest rate cut towards the end of last year, to support a slowing economy.

China targeted a registered urban unemployment rate below 4.6 percent last year, although many economists believe the real number may be higher given the difficulty of tracking the country’s army of migrant workers.

via Reuters

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Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse

Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.