Premier Li Keqiang visited a Ningbo talent market in East China’s Zhejiang province on the afternoon of May 24.

The questions he most frequently asked were about flexible employment.

He asked a young applicant for a part-time food delivery job whether he had participated in the work-related injury insurance program. Then at the stand of a baby-care vocational training school, he asked those registered for training whether they had the endowment insurance. He also asked the recruiter of a foreign-funded human resources company the difference in treatments between labor dispatch and flexible employment.

Premier Li also asked university students finding jobs at the market whether they could accept flexible employment. A lot of them said yes and wished to start their own businesses in the future.

The government has set up platforms for them, the Premier said. If they are capable of getting flexible jobs, they can accumulate not only wealth but also professional and life experience, which will expand their future development space.

The government promoted mass innovation and entrepreneurship, and hoped that university students can build their own businesses and obtain remarkable achievements, according to the Premier.

The head of the local human resources and social security department explained four policies Ningbo currently provides to support flexible employment, including offering rent subsidies, preferential loans to self-employed businesses, providing social insurance subsidies for key groups doing part time work and including 600,000 flexibly employed people in basic old-age insurance, allocating special funds for training, and allowing employers in new industries to participate in work injury compensation insurance.

Premier Li said that flexible employment is an important channel for people to increase their income. Now China has over 200 million people involved in flexible employment, and they are playing a vital role in the economic and social development, especially in the service sector.

Ningbo's policies for flexible employment are worth summarizing, he said, calling for efforts to ensure more flexible employers are covered by insurance.