As the number of college graduates in China is expected to increase by 640,000 to 5.59 million next year, a drive to guide them towards working in less developed areas will become a main channel to help absorb this job-seeking army, a newspaper report says.

China Business News reported that 10 ministries, including the Education Ministry, on Tuesday held a meeting concerning graduate employment pressure, stressing that governments at all levels should intensify their efforts in assisting students to find jobs and encourage them to work in the countryside.

Next year, relevant departments will provide incentives to stimulate graduates joining national projects, such as working in the western hinterland, or serving as teachers in rural areas.

Furthermore, five ministries, including the Education Ministry and Personnel Ministry, launched the nation's first ever large-scale online job fair on Tuesday, uploading around 100,000 job vacancies. The move is a great way to enhance information exchanges between job seekers and employers, the report said.

Although China's central government has done a lot to try to solve the nation's growing employment problem, mounting pressures still persist, the report said.

Deputy Director of the Department of University Student Affairs with the Ministry of Education, Liu Dawei, said the difficulty in finding work results mainly from the imbalanced development of different regions.

(CRIENGLISH.com November 22, 2007)