Looking for Work in Post-Socialist China: Governance, Active Job Seekers and the New Chinese Labor Market by Feng Xu

Author:Feng Xu [Xu, Feng]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Comparative Politics, Public Policy, General
ISBN: 9780415559683
Google: dukVQgAACAAJ
Goodreads: 13712734
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

Based on my interviews of a selection of employment assistants in Shanghai, the job of employment assistants involves knocking on residents’ doors, and getting to know every household with an unemployed family member besides having to keep records of all his/her work for performance evaluation. Once every month, these assistants have to update information on these unemployed. Separately, they also create forms to keep track of unemployed under 35 years old. All community staff members I met in Shanghai on that research visit said that ‘20/30’ cases (youth between 20 and 30) were now considered the most difficult group of people to get employed there, not the ‘40/50’ cases referred to above . The 20/30 group is said to be the ones ‘gnawing at the old’. They are also seen as having incorrect attitudes toward employment. The comments of these employment assistants are supported by numbers collected in a 2001 research report conducted by the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Labor and Social Security. According to the report, the registered unemployed of those between 16 and 25 had been on the increase every year in its study period. Between 1998 and 2001, the unemployment rate of this group year by year was 7%, 12%, 21%, and 36%. In 2001, youth unemployed accounted for 39.3% of the total registered unemployed in the city, about 10% higher than the group of 40/50 (cited in Lu, Wu and Lu 2004: 324–325). The worry about youth unemployment is on multiple fronts: social integration; the (financial) capacity of young men in particular to find mates, and thus ensure the reproduction of future labor force; and their future ability to care for the elderly.

Employment assistants also have to find job vacancies and then match them with the unemployed in their neighborhood. In this, employment assistants continue the tradition of resident committee work. Employment assistants collect detailed data on employment status for each household and each person, and they try to match those unemployed with job vacancies available. Employment assistants can also act as references for those who are seeking employment. Further, employment assistants need to build trust with the unemployed and get to know them. This is to persuade them to go for job interviews the assistants recommend. Employment assistant A in a Shanghai community told me one of such examples: ‘I was not allowed in when I first knocked on one household’s door. Because it was lunch time, the household members were really angry because the only thing they had for lunch was congee, nothing else. After I found out this situation, I brought them some money to help with the kid’s school.’ (Personal Interview, June 20, 2006)

But beyond needing to know the individual situation of each individual household, and trying to serve each better, employment assistants also divide up the unemployed into those who would rather receive the minimum guaranteed income scheme (the bad) and those who are willing to work (the good). Again, the same assistant told me: ‘those who are not willing to

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