China's industrial upgrading continues apace with change of labor structure

China's industrial economy is experiencing a stable run with high-quality development of the manufacturing sector and a change of labor structure thanks to the supply-side structural reform.

The number of industrial enterprises reached 3.45 million by 2018, with an average annual increase of 7.4 percent since 2013. The industrial assets stood at 139.3 trillion yuan ($19.79 trillion), up 5.8 percent annually during the same period, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The growth rate of the number of enterprises and asset scale in the equipment manufacturing sector topped all industrial sectors during the 2013-2018 period, up 9.6 percent and 8.4 percent per year, respectively.

The number of employees in industrial sectors in 2018 was 115.22 million, with a yearly decrease of 3.9 percent since 2013, NBS data showed.

Employees in the equipment manufacturing sector accounted for 39.2 percent of the people hired in industrial sectors in 2018, up 4.8 percentage points from 2018. The ones in raw materials manufacturing and high energy consumption sectors were down 2.4 percentage points and 2.1 percentage points, respectively, during the period.

As China promotes the transformation and upgrading of the equipment manufacturing sector, a decrease in headcount is a normal adjustment.