Some 15 million people in China's urban centers are expected to be unemployed this year, or the equivalent of the total population of Holland, according to data released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
A report from China's main institution for governmental research and counseling says that over 25 million urban residents will be looking for a job in 2007, but only 10 million new jobs will be available for them.
In 2007, economic and industrial growth will cause migratory flows of workers from the country to the cities, increasing the pressure over the job market.
In August, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said that the government wants to keep the urban unemployment rate under five percent.
According to economists, the governmental plan will lead to the creation of 45 million new jobs for migrant workers from rural regions, and an extra 45 million jobs for those who enter the job market, as well as workers recently fired from the public sector.
The academy estimates that China now has over five million people who were sacked by state-owned companies, and that the next state reforms will lead to another 3.6 million unemployed workers within three years.
Qi Jianguo, an economist quoted by the official news agency, Xinhua, said that, "in the rural areas, there are over 100 million people not fully employed, which aggravates the unbalance between rural and urban incomes".
According to recent figures from the Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare (MESW), about 1.4 million students from Chinese universities will be without a job when they graduate in the coming summer.
The MESW also revealed that China's urban unemployment rate reached 4.2 percent in the first semester of 2006, although the statistics don't include 200 million "excessive" rural workers looking for a job in Chinese cities. There are other sub-categories in China not included in the official numbers, such as "workers waiting for a job" or "dismissed workers".