China Approves 15th Five-Year Plan for Employment Strategy

China’s State Council has approved the “15th Five-Year Plan for Implementing the Employment Priority Strategy,” a landmark policy document that will serve as the top-level design for the nation’s employment work from 2026 to 2030. The decision, announced on June 8, comes as China faces record numbers of college graduates entering the job market and persistent structural employment contradictions.

Chaired by Premier Li Qiang, the June 5 executive meeting of the State Council approved the plan alongside a review of employment work, new industrialization initiatives, and a draft regulation on promoting employment and entrepreneurship for veterans, according to Xinhua News Agency.

Context: A Challenging Employment Landscape

The plan arrives at a critical juncture for China’s labor market. In 2026, a record 12.7 million college graduates are expected to enter the workforce, an increase of 480,000 from the previous year. While China’s urban surveyed unemployment rate averaged 5.3% in the first quarter of 2026, youth unemployment among those aged 16 to 24 (excluding students) stood at 16.3% as of April.

The meeting acknowledged that while China’s economic fundamentals remain sound, “total employment pressure persists, structural contradictions are becoming more pronounced, and external environmental changes bring new challenges,” as reported by Xinhua.

The “Big Employment View”

A central concept emerging from the plan is the “big employment view” (大就业观), which calls for embedding employment priorities more deeply into macroeconomic and industrial policymaking. Zhang Chenggang, Director of the China New Employment Forms Research Center at Capital University of Economics and Business, explained that localities must establish this perspective, meaning “the employment priority strategy must be more deeply embedded in macro policies and industrial policies.”

The State Council meeting emphasized that “employment is the foundation of people’s livelihood” and called for strengthening coordination between industrial development and employment creation, according to the official readout.

Key Measures and Policy Directions

The 15th Five-Year Plan builds on the “Stable Jobs, Expand Capacity, Improve Quality Action Plan” issued in May 2026, which introduced 18 specific measures. The new plan outlines several strategic priorities:

Industry-Employment Coordination: Strengthening the synergy between industrial development and job creation, ensuring that economic growth translates into employment opportunities.

Human Resource Development: Accelerating the cultivation of modern human resources and improving the match between education supply and talent demand. The meeting specifically called for “improving the matching degree between education supply and talent demand” through large-scale vocational training.

Key Group Support: Expanding employment channels for college graduates and youth, who face the most acute challenges in the current market. The Chinese government network reported that state-owned enterprises are expected to increase campus recruitment by at least 5 percentage points.

New Employment Forms: Promoting the healthy development of flexible employment and platform-based work, while strengthening labor rights protections for workers in these emerging sectors.

Addressing Structural Contradictions

The core challenge the plan seeks to address is the structural mismatch between labor supply and demand. A January 2026 policy interpretation on gov.cn described this as “the main contradiction in China’s employment field,” characterized by the coexistence of “difficulty finding jobs” and “difficulty recruiting workers.”

During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), China organized subsidized vocational skills training for over 92 million person-times, including more than 40 million enterprise employees and over 30 million migrant workers. The new plan aims to build on this foundation with even more targeted training programs.

Expert Perspectives

Liu Xuezhi, President of the Chinese Academy of Personnel Sciences, emphasized the need for systematic institutional design, stating that China must “ensure high-quality and full employment in the high-quality development of the economy and society through systematic institutional design and continuous policy innovation,” as reported by 21st Century Business Herald.

Yang Zhiyong, President of the Chinese Academy of Fiscal Sciences, noted that promoting employment and income growth is a systematic project requiring economic growth to be maintained within a reasonable range to create enough jobs.

Looking Ahead

The 15th Five-Year Plan for Employment Priority Strategy signals a significant shift in China’s approach to labor market governance, elevating employment considerations to a more central position in macroeconomic coordination. As the plan moves toward implementation, key questions remain about how it will address the employment challenges posed by AI and automation, what specific targets are embedded in the plan, and how local governments will translate the “big employment view” into concrete action.

For the 12.7 million graduates preparing to enter the workforce in the coming months, the plan represents a clear signal that employment stability remains a top national priority.