(ECNS) -- Employment demand across China's first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen saw negative growth year-on-year for the first time, according to a report issued on Thursday by China Institute of Employment Research with Renmin University of China.
The CIER index, designed to monitor China's job climate, rose to 2.43 in the third quarter from 2.26 in the second, indicating continuous improvement in employment.
Increasing recruitment demand among enterprises, decreasing job-hopping in the job market and relatively less job hunting among graduates led to the rising CIER index, said Zeng Xiangquan, director of China Institutefor Employment Research.
The CIER index shows a progressive increase trend in China's first-tier, emerging first-tier, second-tier and third-tier cities, with that of first-tier cities seeing a slight drop over last month.
Employment demand in first-tier cities saw year-on-year drop for the first time, at 7 percent, according to data by recruitment website Zhaopin.
Urban resource optimization, a declining registered permanent residence quota and relocation of outdated industries are the main reasons behind decreasing demand, Zeng said, adding that the trend would continue.
More job applicants are supposed to flow to emerging first-tier cities, he said.
In the IT/Internet sector, which saw the highest employee increase, employment demand in emerging first-tier cities and third-tier cities increased 121 percent and 82 percent respectively, much higher than the national average level of 60 percent, while demand in first-tier cities saw negative growth, with a fall of 2 percent.
Employment in Northeast China saw and uptrend , with the CIER index rising to 1.42 from 1.33 in the second quarter. Employment demand in this region increased 57 percent over last year, much higher than 33 percent in East China.
