By the end of June 2004, a total of 8.37 million people were registered as unemployed in China's urban areas, with rate of 4.3 percent, almost the same as the rate at the end of last year, according to Ministry of Labor and Social Security figures released Thursday (Jul 22). Another 5.9 million people got employed in the first half of 2004, accounting for 65 percent of at targeted number of 9 million set by the Chinese government for the whole year.

Hu Xiaoyi, spokesman with the Ministry of Labor and Social Security attributed the successful control of unemployment to the high attention paid by the central government, the implementation of a series of policies helping people to be reemployed, the timely allocation of reemployment fund, free-of-charge go-between services and training programs for reemployment.

Some 570,000 men over 50 years of age and women over 40 years of age, categories considered to have difficulties finding reemployment, found jobs during the six-month period -- 57 percent of the target set by the government for the whole year.

By the end of June, more than 95 percent of urban neighborhoods had set up employment service centers and more than 80 percent of communities employed special staff for solving the problem of unemployment, according to the ministry.

Editor: Donald