Employment crucial for 15th Five-Year Plan period

Editor's note: The 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) for implementing the employment-first strategy was approved at a State Council executive meeting on Friday. Senior officials of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as well as experts, shared their insights on the country's employment and industrial upgrading with the media after the meeting. Below are excerpts of their remarks as reported by Securities Times and Xinhua News Agency. The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.

Focusing on the job-hunting needs of graduates, the human resources and social security authorities will continue to introduce high-quality employment policies and services to expand employment channels and create jobs.

Throughout the 15th Five-Year Plan period, it is essential to follow the employment-first strategy and incorporate the goal of high-quality and full employment into national economic and social development initiatives. Coordination between industries and employment should be increased. Greater efforts should be made to improve and modernize the industrial system, and priority should be given to key sectors that are capable of generating a large number of jobs. Government authorities should guide the orderly relocation of industries, and foster new drivers for employment growth by developing the digital economy, green economy and silver economy.

The fundamental solution for employment challenges lies in development. According to the requirements put forward at the State Council executive meeting, local governments should develop industries to stabilize employment, upgrade existing industries to create more jobs, and better protect employees' rights and interests to improve the quality of employment.

Carrying out vocational skills training is an important measure to resolve the structural imbalance between the needs of job seekers and employers. Improving the competence of the workforce is vital for achieving the goals of upgrading traditional industries and fostering emerging industries and industries of the future. Hence it is necessary to keep enhancing the quality of such training programs to help more workers acquire professional skills, secure jobs and increase their income.

New quality productive forces and the country's new industrialization drive are deeply related, and they contribute to each other's advancement. Scientific and technological innovation serves as the key to integrating the two.

New industrialization features high technology, sound economic returns, low resource consumption and minimal environmental pollution. This is in line with the direction in which new quality productive forces are developing. Scientific and technological innovation provide concrete approaches for the two to interact better with one another.

Efforts to cultivate industries of the future will drive both the development of new quality productive forces and the upgrading of the modern industrial system. The development of industries of the future will help boost the high-quality development of the country, and strengthen the industrial foundation for building a modern socialist China in all respects.

China has seen steady progress in the development of industries of the future, and gained some first-mover advantages in key fields. Nevertheless, challenges remain, including insufficient capacity for original innovation, reliance on others for key and core technologies, an innovation ecosystem in need of further improvement, and institutional and mechanism barriers to be removed.