THE government has slashed social insurance contributions paid by enterprises amid efforts to boost the job market hit by COVID-19, officials said Tuesday.

From February to June, employers saw a decline of 576.9 billion yuan (US$82.6 billion) in insurance payments related to old-age, unemployment and work-related injuries, said Zhang Ying, an official with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.

Besides, insurance premiums worth 63.6 billion yuan were returned to enterprises to help them sustain stable payrolls, while 40.5 billion yuan worth of employment subsidies were handed out, Zhang said.

Nie Mingjun, a ministry official in charge of pension fund, said the total premium reduction is expected to reach 1.9 trillion yuan in 2020.

“The cut will be unprecedented in scale,” Nie said. “It will be instrumental in helping enterprises rise above difficulties and ensuring further stability and expansion of employment.”

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China’s surveyed unemployment rate in urban areas stood at 5.7 percent in June, 0.2 percentage points lower than that of May. A total of 5.64 million new urban jobs were created in the first half of 2020, achieving 62.7 percent of the annual target.

“Employment is steadily recovering, thanks to effective control of the COVID-19 epidemic, steady progress in business and work resumption, as well as a warmer economy,” Zhang said.

According to a government work report, this year China aims to add over 9 million new urban jobs and keep the surveyed urban unemployment rate around 6 percent.

The surveyed unemployment rate among jobseekers holding junior college diploma or higher degrees and aged between 20 and 24, the majority of whom are fresh college graduates, stood at 19.3 percent in June, up 3.9 percentage points year on year, National Bureau of Statistics data showed.

More than 91 percent of Chinese university graduates polled by China Youth Daily and wenjuan.com said that they need more job-hunting support amid the COVID-19 epidemic.

To help millions of graduates, local governmental departments vied to create opportunities for employers to find their prospective employees more efficiently amid the combat against COVID-19.

Since the Ministry of Education (MOE) co-sponsored the online recruiting service platform “24365” in March, a total of 29 special online job fairs have been held, offering nearly 5 million job vacancies in fields including strategic emerging industries and health care.

By June 21, the platform had posted over 13 million jobs and received nearly 30 million job applications from graduates.

(Xinhua)