China's urban employment has gained the first increase in the first half year since 1996 thanks to rapid economic development and growing seasonal employment demand, the National Statistics Bureau (NBS) said Thursday.

In the first six months of the year, the number of people employed in urban areas reached 108.96 million, 552,000 more than the same period of 2003, according to a monthly report released by the NBS.

The total salaries paid reached 776.2 billion yuan (about 93.5 billion US dollars), a yearly increase of 14.3 percent.

During the period, approximately 68.1 million people were employed by state-owned enterprises, a decrease of 2.31 million over last year, and 9.71 million people were employed by collective enterprises, a decrease of 1.11 million.

People employed by other economic sectors rose to 31.2 million, 3.97 million more than the same period of 2003.

Statistics also show that salaries grew rapidly in the first half year, with the average payment to an urban employee standing at 7,100 yuan (about 860 US dollars), an increase of 14.1 percent year-on-year.