CCTV.com reports: Employment is the foundation of people's livelihoods and matters for the healthy development of the economy and society. The '15th Five-Year Plan for Implementing the Employment Priority Strategy' clarifies the goals, key tasks, and policy measures for deeply implementing the employment priority strategy and promoting high-quality and full employment during the 15th Five-Year period. What are the key deployments of the Plan? How will employment priority be advanced over the next five years? Authoritative figures offered interpretations.
The Plan makes clear the need to 'strengthen the synergy between industry and employment,' 'tap the employment potential of emerging fields,' and 'vigorously cultivate new occupations and new jobs.' Experts said that in the process of strengthening industrial ecosystems, extending value chains, and expanding application scenarios, the dividends of industrial development and technological progress will inevitably be transformed into drivers of employment promotion.
Guan Bo, a researcher at the Academy of Macroeconomic Research of the National Development and Reform Commission, said this includes actively developing a series of professional positions such as technology R&D and engineering application, expanding and increasing more high-quality employment demand and job opportunities in industrial development. At the same time, the development of future industries also places higher demands on workers' quality, requiring forward-looking planning in investing in people and further optimizing the talent cultivation structure of universities.
To build a high-quality talent team suited to the needs of future industries-ones that industries can rely on and enterprises can use-the Plan makes clear that China will 'carry out large-scale vocational skills training and smooth the career development channels for skilled talent.'
Wang Xiaojun, a first-level inspector in the Department of Vocational Capacity Building of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said efforts will be made to promote broad training coverage precisely matched to employment demand. At the same time, the income security and treatment of skilled talent will be increased, the link between skilled employment and skilled income growth will be smoothed, and workers will be encouraged to master skills to achieve skilled employment and skilled income growth.
All industries are upgrading toward new demands, and jobs are iterating.
The Plan makes clear that over the next five years, China will 'expand the employment capacity of the service sector' and 'leverage AI to help transform and upgrade traditional industries, tapping digital and intelligent employment opportunities in traditional fields.' Right now, new changes in employment are taking place. In the service sector, companion caregivers for medical visits have upgraded from 'errand-running' to 'health care'; in manufacturing, intelligent production-line transformations are releasing a continuous stream of talent demand.
Early in the morning, Wu Feifei, a medical companion, arrived at the hospital to give pre-consultation reminders to patients. Wu said that recently the company launched a medical large model and medical database, allowing frontline companions like her to use AI to learn patients' conditions and other information in greater detail before providing services.
The patient Wu served today was most concerned about cross-regional medical insurance reimbursement. While queuing for a number, Wu patiently explained the relevant policies.
Four years ago, Wu, originally a nurse in her hometown, chose to move to Beijing and become a full-time medical companion.
Wu said that more and more young people seek medical care away from home, and elderly people bring children to the hospital, which gives her a sense of prospects. Currently, she can take 3 to 5 orders a day.
Wu said that the vast majority of her colleagues have medical backgrounds, and from the initial simple 'errand-running' to today's professional 'health care' services, the profession of medical companion she is engaged in is constantly being upgraded in quality.
Wu said that after the consultation, they produce a post-visit summary and send it to the patient, so the patient clearly knows medication reminders and follow-up reminders, covering the later-stage rehabilitation care.
Data shows that China's current demand gap for medical companions is about 830,000 to 2.2 million person-times. In the future, the fields of companion services and health care will release a large amount of employment demand.
In addition, the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing is constantly generating new positions and new demands. Cixi, Zhejiang, is a major auto parts production base in China. At a local enterprise, workers are placing car roof ambient lights into a testing device. Fifty seconds later, the test results for indicators such as current value and uniformity are generated. Just a few months ago, this testing work was entirely dependent on manual labor.
The developer of this automated intelligent testing equipment is Zhang Xi, who just joined the company in 2026. A graduate in electrical engineering and automation, he learned during his job search that many manufacturing enterprises in Cixi, Zhejiang, were upgrading their production lines and urgently needed technical talent like him to deeply participate in process optimization, process reengineering, and algorithm design. Zhang's company currently urgently needs more than 30 technical talents.
Meng Weiqiang, the company's head, said that automation and digitalization are a core direction of manufacturing transformation and upgrading, and talent demand is growing accordingly-especially compound talents with both on-site process knowledge and production data modeling and optimization capabilities. In the first half of 2026, they completed the optimization and upgrading of 16 production lines, raising overall capacity by 23%.
The 'two-way embrace' between talent and industry is opening up greater space for the high-quality development of manufacturing. In the first half of 2026, Cixi's auto parts exports reached 750 million yuan, up 28.3% year-on-year. Data from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security shows that China's total number of professional and technical talents now exceeds 80 million. During the 15th Five-Year period, China will also promote the synchronized development of talent quality structure with technological innovation, technology iteration, and industrial upgrading.
