The "15th Five-Year Plan" proposes to ensure that at least one person in zero-employment households is employed. Which positions will become the "main support"?

The "15th Five-Year Plan" identifies the stabilization and expansion of employment as a fundamental priority, with the specific policy goal of ensuring at least one employed person in zero-employment households. The "main support" for achieving this target will not be a single sector, but a strategic combination of positions generated by public welfare placements, the service economy's expansion, and targeted skills training aligned with industrial upgrading. This multi-pronged approach is designed to address both immediate livelihood needs and longer-term labor market integration, focusing on individuals who may face structural barriers to employment due to skill mismatches, regional economic shifts, or household circumstances.

Mechanistically, a primary channel will be the creation and allocation of public welfare positions, often administered at the community or street level. These roles, such as community coordinators, environmental maintenance workers, public facility assistants, and grassroots administrative support staff, serve a dual purpose. They provide immediate, stable income to households in distress while fulfilling essential social management and service functions that are undersupplied by the private market. Their effectiveness lies in the state's capacity to directly generate these jobs, bypassing the need for competitive hiring processes that might disadvantage the long-term unemployed. Concurrently, the sustained growth of the modern service sector offers a vast reservoir of potential positions. This includes roles in elderly and childcare, logistics and delivery, property management, retail, hospitality, and e-commerce support—fields that typically have lower formal entry barriers and higher labor absorption capacity. The digital economy, particularly platform-based services, will also contribute, though often in a more flexible and less stable form of employment.

The plan’s success, however, hinges on moving beyond mere placement to sustainable employment. Therefore, a critical component is the systematic alignment of vocational training with emerging needs in advanced manufacturing and digital services. Positions in equipment maintenance, new energy vehicle assembly, installation and upkeep for 5G and IoT infrastructure, and basic data annotation or processing are examples where targeted, subsidized upskilling can create pathways to higher-quality jobs. This shifts the support mechanism from passive income provision to active human capital development. The implicit analysis is that zero-employment households often represent a concentration of vulnerabilities that market mechanisms alone will not resolve, necessitating proactive state intermediation in job matching and skill formation.

The implications of this policy are significant for social stability and economic restructuring. Successfully implementing it requires seamless coordination between human resources departments, civil affairs bureaus, local governments, and vocational institutions to identify households, assess capabilities, and deploy the appropriate mix of supportive measures. The main challenge will be ensuring the quality and dignity of the employment provided, avoiding the creation of "make-work" roles with no progression, while genuinely connecting individuals to growing segments of the economy. The policy's ultimate performance metric will be the durable exit of households from state dependency into self-sustaining employment, thereby strengthening the domestic consumption base and mitigating a key source of social risk.

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