This photo taken on March 18, 2023 shows a view of a job fair in Harbin, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. [Photo/Xinhua]
The employment expectation index stood at 52.3 percent in the first quarter of 2023, increasing by 9.4 percentage points from that in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to the survey conducted by the People's Bank of China among 20,000 urban households in 50 cities.
The index gauging these households' feelings about the current employment situation also moved in a positive direction, up to 39.9 percent, 6.8 percentage points higher from the previous quarter.
Of those polled, 85.6 percent said their incomes had increased or stayed basically the same.
This year, China aims to create around 12 million new urban jobs, with a surveyed urban unemployment rate of around 5.5 percent, according to the government work report.
