An accounts-based population model for making population projections for the urban and rural areas of China was developed and reported on in detail in an earlier paper. In this paper the implications of the broad trends in population and labour-force growth over the next fifty years for the employment position in China will be discussed. Unemployment and underemployment are problems facing China today. Ongoing economic reform in the employment system runs the risk of rapidly increasing the number of unemployed, especially in urban China. In this paper, the following main dimensions of the employment problem in China will be discussed: Labour-resource utilization and employment structure, the dual employment system between urban and rural areas, unemployment and underemployment, employment-system reform, and labour-force quality and training.
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