China’s leaders say the nation’s labor market is healthy, while independent economists aren’t so sure. But one subject of wide agreement is that the tradition of “hand me down” jobs needs to change. Inheriting a job at one of China’s mammoth state-owned enterprises from one’s parents or even grandparents is a long-standing practice in China, especially in those sectors that tend to offer generous benefits, such as energy, finance and the railroads (China has a huge rail network). And these aren’t necessarily executive positions, but more likely a simple wage job. In a report Monday, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said that China’s deepening economic reform has yet to stop the practice, an act of “social unfairness” that it said was upsetting the nation’s public. The Xinhua report also pointed an increasingly tense employment situation, as the pace of China’s massive urbanization quickens. That said, however, the top Chinese leadership has repeatedly stated that the labor market is healthy. Finance Minister Lou Jiwei reiterated earlier this week that China’s employment situation remains “good.” And just a few weeks earlier, his boss — Premier Li Keqiang — announced that China had added nearly 10 million news jobs in urban areas this year through August. But some evidence points to the contrary, such as the preliminary version of HSBC’s Purchasing Managers’ Index for September, as its employment sub-index fell to 46.9, the lowest since January 2009 at the height of the global financial crisis. “The sub-index captures the change in employment level in the manufacturing sector from August to September, suggesting higher employment pressures,” said Nomura’s China economists in a note out Wednesday. Regardless of just how high China’s unemployment situation is — the country doesn’t publish comprehensive data on joblessness — the government is very much opposed to hand-me-down jobs, as it wants state firms to offer equal opportunity for all job seekers. But so too are those workers at the top SOEs opposed to abolishing the tradition. Back in April, hundreds of employees at the Daqing Oil Field — China’s largest, and wholly owned by state energy giant China National Petroleum Corp. — staged a protest after the company changed its hiring policy, with the demonstrators bringing along their children who had just graduated from college. And CNPC wasn’t even turning those employees’ relatives away; they just wanted them to take job training and qualification exams before entering the company, instead of hiring them directly as was done previously. This wasn’t the first such backlash to reform. Back in August 2012, a retired employee of a water-supply company in the southern city of Shaoyang burst into an executive meeting and set the room on fire, burning three of the executives to death, after the company refused to give one of her two sons a job. But the government says it’s ready to fight for change to the hand-me-down-job culture, with the deputy minister for China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security saying in May that laws to curb the practice were being drafted — though also admitting that such change will be difficult to implement. Meanwhile, the recent spate of editorials on the subject in state-run media continue, with China Youth Daily saying Wednesday that “employment is the essence of people’s livelihood, and equality in employment is one of the bottom lines of social justice and fairness.” http://www.marketwatch.com/