Ningbo plans to ramp up efforts to stabilize employment to mitigate the adverse impacts of the global pandemic.

The city has pledged to create more than 160,000 new jobs within the year, with the registered urban unemployment rate at less than 3.5 percent.

It aims to attract more than 130,000 college students seeking employment or looking to start businesses this year. 

In addition, more efforts will be made to promote cooperation between colleges and enterprises so as to generate more jobs and internship opportunities. 

The city will also carry out a campaign to foster vocational talent. It aims to attract 50,000 high-skilled professionals and offer vocational training to more than 180,000 people this year. 

Efforts will also be made to cultivate talent in rural areas, increasing the number of skilled rural workers in the city to 200,000.

In addition, a new State-level regulation will take effect on May 1 stipulating that employers will be harshly punished for defaulting on salaries for migrant workers.

The city will strictly enforce the new regulation to ensure migrant workers receive their salaries on time and without issue.

Furthermore, Ningbo has become increasingly attractive to college graduates in recent years.

Roughly 130,000 college graduates came to work in the city in 2019, up 65.2 percent over the previous year, according to data from the local human resources and social security departments. 

The satisfaction level among the graduates was among the highest of any major city in the nation last year, according to surveys by third-party institutions such as human resource service provider zhaopin.com and the Mycos Research Institute.