China created 6.92 million new jobs last year, with the total number of registered employed standing at 744.32 million, latest statistics show.

Nearly half of the total employed, or more than 365 million, are engaged in agriculture, according to a report jointly released by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security (MOLSS) and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The number of people employed in industry accounts for 21.6 percent of the total, or 160.77 million, according to the report, while the tertiary industry, or the service sector, employs 218.09million people, nearly one third of the total.

Statistics show that the number of registered employed in urban areas stood at 256.39 million in 2003, an increase of 8.59 million from the previous year, while the private economy employed 49.22 million people, an increase of 6.54 million.

According to the MOLSS, China created 3.6 million new jobs in the first four months this year, accomplishing 40 percent of the year's target.

This was a good start for the year, said Zhang Xiaojian, vice minister of the MOLSS, at a national conference on promoting employment.

Zhang said that China's fast-growing economy serves as a prerequisite for tackling the nation's employment issue.

If China could achieve a yearly economic growth rate of seven percent in the period of the 10th Five-year Plan (2001-2005), the nation would create 40 million new job opportunities through readjusting employment structure during the period, Zhang said.

The private economy, which employed 30 million more people from 1996 to 2000, has become the main force for creating jobs, Zhang said.

Meanwhile, Zhang pointed out that the service industry and small and medium-sized enterprises could play a greater role in solving China's unemployment problem.

Statistics show that the number of registered unemployed stood at 8.1 million in the first quarter this year, 100,000 more than that at the end of 2003, while the urban registered unemployment rate remained at 4.3 percent, the same as last year.