Since the beginning of this year, the focus of macroeconomic policies has shifted more towards benefiting people's livelihoods, promoting consumption, and encouraging more financial resources to 'invest in people'. The Central Political Bureau meeting held at the end of July once again emphasized the importance of "stabilizing employment, enterprises, markets, and expectations" and "expanding consumer demand while ensuring and improving people's livelihoods". Recently, various regions have introduced a series of measures to support the expansion of employment, promote the increase of residents' income and reduce their burden, and improve the elderly care and child rearing service system. According to expert analysis, with the implementation and refinement of macro policies that benefit people's livelihoods, China's economic development will present a more coordinated, stable, and resilient development trend. Strengthening employment priority orientation is the "barometer" of economic development and the "ballast" of social stability. The Central Political Bureau meeting held in April this year first proposed the "four stabilizations", namely "stabilizing employment, stabilizing enterprises, stabilizing the market, and stabilizing expectations". The Central Political Bureau meeting held in July continued the requirements of the "four stabilizations". Both meetings placed "stable employment" as the top priority, reflecting a priority orientation towards employment. Recently, various regions have increased their support for stable employment policies and released policy dividends. The implementation opinions recently issued by Fujian to comprehensively promote high-quality and full employment are clear, implementing a one-time stable employment reward and subsidy policy, and supporting key enterprises to stabilize and expand employment; Guizhou has put forward 26 specific measures in 8 aspects to further stabilize and expand employment, increasing the single household credit limit for special loans for stabilizing and expanding employment for enterprises and individuals to 50 million yuan and 10 million yuan, respectively. Expanding the employment capacity of new economy and new business models is a key focus of support in various regions. Fujian has made it clear that it will comprehensively promote the construction of online gig platforms, reasonably layout gig stations, and promote the wide coverage of commercial insurance for accidental injuries to employees in the form of government purchased services. Guizhou proposed to strengthen vocational skills training, launch alliance construction of Maotai flavor Baijiu, big data, tourism, homemaking and elderly care, and equipment manufacturing, and open 100 "order classes" for school school and school enterprise cooperation. One of the key focuses of economic work in the second half of the year is to consolidate the current good situation of economic development. Therefore, the Central Politburo meeting at the end of July once again proposed to strengthen bottom line thinking. We believe that the most important thing in current bottom line thinking is to hold onto the 'bottom line' of the domestic economy and society, and the 'bottom line' of the domestic economy at this stage should be people's livelihood and employment. ”Zhang Jun, Chief Economist of Galaxy Securities, stated. Since the second quarter, the overall employment situation has remained stable. In the second quarter, the average urban survey unemployment rate nationwide was 5.0%, a decrease of 0.3 percentage points from the first quarter. Wang Pingping, Director of the Population and Employment Statistics Department of the National Bureau of Statistics, said, "In the second quarter, the overall operation of the national economy was stable, the employment priority policy continued to be strengthened, the labor market was relatively active, and the urban surveyed unemployment rate decreased compared to the first quarter, remaining the same as the same period last year." In the first half of the year, 6.95 million new urban jobs were created nationwide, completing 58% of the annual target task. Wang Pingping analyzed that the current momentum of expanding domestic demand still needs to be strengthened, and there are many external unstable and uncertain factors. The employment pressure of key groups such as youth and migrant workers, as well as some industries, has increased. In the next stage, we should continue to make good use of the macroeconomic policy toolbox and further increase the support for stable employment policies. Improving the elderly care and childcare service system. Recently, policies such as establishing a childcare subsidy system, building a universal childcare service system, and gradually promoting free preschool education have been intensively introduced at the national level. Local governments have actively followed up and implemented a series of measures, continuously improving the public service system for the "one elderly and one small" group in many places, further ensuring and improving people's livelihoods. Recently, Beijing, Shanghai and other places have introduced birth support policies, which have refined specific support measures from multiple aspects such as birth services, childcare services, education services, and housing support. For example, Beijing has included appropriate childbirth pain relief and assisted reproductive technology projects in the scope of medical insurance payment; Shanghai implements maternity leave social security subsidies for female employees and encourages employers to set up "maternity friendly posts" for female employees who return to work after childbirth, adopting flexible management methods such as flexible commuting, home or remote work, and flexible vacation. Elderly care services are crucial to the happy lives of over 300 million elderly people aged 60 and above. Recently, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Ministry of Finance organized the implementation of a pension service consumption subsidy project for elderly people with moderate to severe disabilities, and Shandong was selected as a provincial-level pilot. The Department of Civil Affairs of Shandong Province recently clarified that electronic consumption vouchers will be used as a subsidy to offset the amount of personal self paid elderly care service consumption within the scope of the subsidy project, with a deduction ratio of 40% of the elderly care service consumption amount. An elderly person with moderate to severe disability who purchases home service for 100 yuan only needs to pay 60 yuan out of pocket after deducting 40% of the elderly service consumption voucher. ”Zhang Zhiyi, Deputy Director of the Department of Civil Affairs of Shandong Province, recently introduced at a press conference that in the next step, Shandong will actively, steadily, effectively and orderly implement the elderly care service consumption subsidy project to moderately or above disabled elderly people, effectively transforming the policy's value into practical results that benefit people's livelihoods and promote consumption. In the first half of the year, the finance department prioritized basic livelihood as a fiscal expenditure area, with social security and employment expenditures increasing by 9.2% year-on-year, education expenditures increasing by 5.9%, and health expenditures increasing by 4.3%. In Zhang Jun's view, in the second half of the year, we can strengthen investment in the livelihood sector and continue to increase financial support in areas such as education, healthcare, elderly care, and parenting. At the same time, strengthen investment in human capital. In addition, we will continue to optimize the structure of fiscal expenditure, with a focus on people's livelihoods and tilting towards disadvantaged and underdeveloped areas. Multiple interviewed experts believe that in the second half of the year, macroeconomic policies will continue to strengthen the direction of benefiting people's livelihoods, forming a virtuous cycle of economic development and improvement of people's livelihoods. Improving people's livelihoods helps to enhance their quality of life, improve their human capital level, thereby increasing residents' income and boosting their confidence. This itself can also unleash demand potential and promote the formation of new economic growth points, "said Liu Xiaoge, Deputy Director of the Development Strategy and Regional Economic Research Department of the Development Research Center of the State Council. The combination of benefiting people's livelihoods and promoting consumption is the focus of the policy to expand domestic demand. Zhou Chen, Director of the National Economic Comprehensive Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, previously stated that in the next step, the National Development and Reform Commission will continue to do a good job in expanding consumption with greater efforts, more practical measures, and better services: focus on promoting the enhancement of consumption capacity and making everyone dare to consume; Cultivate new growth points for service consumption, so that everyone can consume; Continuously optimizing consumer supply to make everyone willing to consume. In the first half of this year, residents' income and consumption expenditure achieved steady growth. The per capita disposable income of residents in China increased by 5.4% year-on-year in real terms, and the per capita consumption expenditure of residents in China increased by 5.3% year-on-year in real terms. Zhang Yi, Director of the Household Survey Department of the National Bureau of Statistics, stated that in the next stage, we will continue to stabilize and expand employment, solidly do a good job in ensuring people's livelihoods, improve residents' income levels, stabilize residents' income expectations, enhance residents' willingness to consume, and promote sustained and stable growth in residents' income and consumption. Wei Qijia, director and researcher of the Industrial Economics Research Office of the National Information Center, believes that strengthening the livelihood orientation of macro policies is crucial for promoting economic development. Policies are needed to support the silver haired economy, first-time economy, and create a favorable development environment. In Liu Xiaoge's view, with the continuous strengthening of macro policies and the improvement of various social security systems, the sense of gain, happiness, and security of the people will be further enhanced in the future. China's economy and society will also show a more coordinated, stable, and resilient development trend. (New Society)