Amid a global employment winter mainly due to the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic, China is implementing new measures to address the challenge posed by a record number of college graduates next year, the Ministry of Education said on Dec 1.

Roughly 9.1 million students are expected to graduate next year, an increase of 350,000 over this year, the ministry said in a news release.

In a video conference held by the ministry and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, both ministries called for strong efforts from local governments and higher education institutions to ensure a stable employment mechanism and help more graduates find jobs.

The Education Ministry encouraged local education authorities and colleges to look for more opportunities at strategically important emerging industries and modern service sectors. It also urged graduates to work at the grassroots level and apply to enlist in the Chinese armed forces.

Further, local human resources and social security authorities should encourage State-owned enterprises, and small and medium-sized enterprises to expand employment and offer more support for college students who want to start their own companies, the human resources ministry said.

The video conference was held for the first time at all universities and was attended by more than 110,000 people.

Meanwhile, Liu Changya, director of the education ministry's department of development planning, said at another conference that the first-time employment rate, which measures how many students successfully land jobs right after graduation, has stayed above 77 percent over the past five years for the overall 40.9 million college graduates, underscoring concerted efforts to improve the education and employment of the nation.

College graduates faced "unprecedented challenges" from the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors, and it has been "extremely difficult" to ensure stable employment, said Wang Hui, director of the ministry's department of college student affairs.

More than 2.8 million students have landed jobs in the public sector, such as in government institutions, State-owned enterprises and public schools－up from 2.1 million last year, he said in September.

Liu Chenyang, student counselor at Beijing International Studies University, said graduates are likely to face even fiercer competition for employment next year. Apart from more domestic graduates, an increasing number of Chinese students returning from overseas after graduating this year makes the situation more thorny.

However, universities have accumulated a lot of experience helping students find jobs this year, and graduates are relatively more prepared for tough situations, he said.

Yu Hanyu, student counselor at Hunan University in Changsha, said the university started to make preparations very early for students' employment.

Yu, who works in the university's materials science and engineering college, said she has offered employment guidance to senior-year students since summer vacation. She also said the students are well aware of the tough employment situation and have worked harder to find good jobs.

Early preparation has paid off, and about 20 percent of graduates from her college have found jobs with annual salaries exceeding 200,000 yuan ($30,000) during the autumn job season, a sign that the situation is better than last year, she said.