China job challenges persist amid low unemployment

China’s unemployment rate has hit its lowest point in multiple years at 3.95% by the end of September, but employment still face challenges as the economy pushes ahead with structural reforms, China’s labor ministry said on Sunday. The ministry of human resources and social security said in a statement that 10.97 million new jobs had been created in China from January to September this year, a growth of 300,000 compared with the previous year, Reuters reports. The figure represents having essentially fulfilled the ministry’s year-end target, the ministry said. Despite being ahead of schedule, Yin Weimin, head of the ministry, told reporters that “raising the capacity to employ workers overall still faces large pressures.” “We need to create 15 million jobs per year,” Yin said, singling out China’s more than 8 million new university graduates that enter the job market each year as one group in need of additional employment.