Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, recorded a record low unemployment rate of 2.42 percent last year, according to the city's labor and social security department.

The city allocated 20 million yuan (2.41 million US dollars) for training rural laborers in professional skills and helped more than 50,000 laid off rural laborers find jobs in non-agricultural sectors last year. Overall, the city earmarked 250 million yuan (30.22 million US dollars) for re-employment programs last year, 75 percent more than that for the previous year, the department said.

Supporting policies, which targeted people in their forties and fifties in the past, now cover people 35 and older. The first employee of a household is given subsidies, and intermediate agencies that help people of special groups, such as disabled people and people in their forties and fifties, find jobs are also subsidized.

The city's per capita wage income reached 3,661 yuan (442.68 US dollars), up 13 percent over 2003.

Guangzhou created 310,000 new jobs last year, and 60 percent of the city's jobless people in their forties and fifties found jobs.

Source: Xinhua