THE country’s urban residents were more upbeat about the employment situation in the first quarter of this year than the previous quarter, according to a central bank survey.

The employment expectation index stood at 52.3% in the first quarter of 2023, increasing by 9.4 percentage points from that in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to the survey conducted by the People’s Bank of China among 20,000 urban households in 50 cities.

The index gauging these households’ feelings about the current employment situation also moved in a positive direction, up to 39.9%, 6.8 percentage points higher from the previous quarter.

Of those polled, 85.6% said their incomes had increased or stayed basically the same.

This year, China aims to create around 12 million new urban jobs, with a surveyed urban unemployment rate of around 5.5%, according to the government work report.(Xinhua)