A robust economy since 2001 has helped to maintain an increasing number of employed people in the Chinese capital, a senior employment official said Sunday.

According to Song Fengjing, deputy director of the Beijing Labor and Social Security Bureau, the city's number of urban registered unemployed persons was 72,100 by the end of March, and the city's urban registered unemployment rate was 1.48 percent, far lower than the national average of 4.3 percent in the first quarter of 2004.

Song said 42,400 out of total 119,800 registered jobless people in the city had found jobs in the first three months.

According to the deputy director, Beijing had over 7 million employed persons in 2003, or 241,000 more employed than the previous year. He said the booming tertiary, or service, industry, contributed a rising share to job creation in 2003, or 3.6 percentage points higher the year before.

Song predicted that Beijing's gross domestic product for 2004 would approach 400 billion yuan (48.2 billion US dollars) and would create 250,000 new jobs, suggesting an optimistic picture of rising employment in Beijing.

China plans to rein in its urban registered unemployment rate to no more than 4.7 percent for the year 2004.

Source: Xinhua