A total of 11.84 million urban Chinese found jobs last year, exceeding the nine million target for the whole year, Tian Chengping, minister of labor and social security, said on Thursday.

This is the first time that China has seen the number of newly employed urban people exceeding 10 million annually, Tian said at a national meeting on labor and social security in Beijing.

"The employment situation in China has improved a lot in recent years, which will contribute a lot to the overall economic and social development," said Wang Yadong, deputy head of the training and employment department of the ministry.

In 2006, about 5.05 million unemployed found new jobs, one percent higher than the original target. The registered unemployment rate in urban areas was 4.1 percent, indicating a slight decline.

Last year also saw increasing number of people buying insurance, Tian said.

By the end of last year, 186 million people bought endowment insurance, 157 million bought medicare, 111 million were policy holders of unemployment insurance, a new high in the past five years, 102 million involved in industrial injuries and 64.46 million bought reproduction insurance.

The number of people buying endowment, medicare, industrial injury and reproduction insurance were more than 10 million each than that for the previous year, Tian said.

According to official figures, 25.38 million migrant workers bought insurance on industrial injury by the end of last year, 12.86 million more than that for the end of the previous year. Another 23.67 million migrant workers bought medicare, up by 18.78 year-on-year.

Source: Xinhua