The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of China recently issued the '15th Five-Year Plan for Human Resources and Social Security Development'. The plan sets 18 quantitative indicators across seven areas—employment, social security, talent development, income distribution, labor relations, public services, and regional coordinated development—with the main thread of strengthening human resource development and utilization to promote high-quality development.
Specific core targets are laid out in the plan. For employment, the number of new urban jobs is to remain at a considerable scale, with 25 million reemployed urban unemployed workers and 6.5 million employed persons in difficulty; the surveyed urban unemployment rate will be kept within 5.5%. For social security, the basic old-age insurance coverage rate will stay above 95%, with 255 million people covered by unemployment insurance and 345 million by work-related injury insurance; the scale of enterprise and occupational annuity funds is expected to exceed 9 trillion yuan. For technical and skilled talent, 14 million new professional qualification certificates will be obtained by professional and technical personnel, 35,000 postdoctoral researchers will be recruited annually, and 40 million person-times of new vocational qualification or skill level certificates will be obtained by skilled workers, of which 14 million will be at the senior technician level and above. For public services, by the end of the 15th Five-Year Plan period, the coverage rate of the population applying for electronic social security cards will reach 90%. The success rate of labor and personnel dispute mediation is set at 65%, the arbitration case closure rate at 93%, and the case closure rate for complaints reported to labor security supervision at 97%.
The plan introduces multiple innovative deployments. Specifically, in response to new technology development such as artificial intelligence, the plan clearly arranges key tasks for 'AI + human resources and social security', including implementing an AI employment creation plan, promoting 'AI + mediation and arbitration' applications, and further carrying out the 'Digital Human Resources and Social Security' and 'AI+' actions. In vocational skills training, spearheaded by the 'Skills Light Up the Future' training action, over 50 million person-times of subsidized training will be provided, including 17.5 million person-times for migrant workers, and plans call for building a batch of high-quality technician colleges and 100 high-quality specialties. In social security, innovative pilots for enterprise annuities will be explored, the trial for occupational injury insurance will be expanded, and flexible workers, migrant workers, and workers in new forms of employment will be encouraged to participate in employee old-age insurance. In labor relations, the plan will improve policies protecting the rights of workers in new forms of employment and standardize the employment practices of platform enterprises.
The plan was compiled on the basis of comprehensively sorting out relevant tasks in the 15th Five-Year Plan Outline, organizing multiple expert review sessions, and soliciting opinions from various parties. It consists of 10 chapters and 40 sections, and puts forward six basic principles, including upholding the overall leadership of the Party and putting the people first. To ensure implementation, the plan sets up 11 columns listing a number of practical and assessable projects and measures, such as the high-quality full employment promotion project, the large-scale vocational skills upgrading training action, and the regional coordinated development quality upgrading project.