Enterprises with trouble in production and operation due to the global financial crisis that have enjoyed subsidies for stabilising employment for three months, six months or less than 12 months may apply to have these subsidies extended to up to 12 months cumulatively.

Beijing’s human resources and social security bureau recently issued a supplementary notice on supporting enterprises in ensuring stable jobs, further increasing its assistance to troubled enterprises by allowing them to apply for employment stabilisation subsidies one more time.

In order to cope with the global financial crisis and help enterprises maintain stability of employment, Beijing issued a notice on supporting enterprises in ensuring stable jobs in April this year. Since the implementation of this policy, a total of 402 enterprises in the Chinese capital have been granted employment and social security subsidies worth a total of Rmb518 million. The policy benefited 65,800 people awaiting jobs or sharing jobs on rotation and effectively lowered the unemployment rate by 1.1 percentage points.

“The unemployment rate in Beijing was 0.72% at the end of August, a 0.08 percentage point drop from the same period last year,” said an official of Beijing’s human resources and social security bureau in charge of employment promotion. The “supplementary notice” further emphasises that since the purpose of employment stabilisation subsidy is to ensure stability of jobs, enterprises will be allowed to apply for a lump-sum subsidy of the outstanding sum available to them upon application if they promise not to lay off workers and undertake to pay wages to their workers and pay for their social insurance premiums.