China's urban unemployment rate maintained in 2012 - Xinhua

A job seeker searches for job vacancy information at a job fair held at China International Exhibition Center in Beijing, China, Jan. 6, 2013. The job fair, held for postgraduates, provided 18,000 job vacancies and was expected to attract 40,000 job seekers. (Xinhua/Wan Xiang)

BEIJING, Jan. 25 (Xinhua) -- Some 12.26 million new jobs were created in China last year, with the urban registered unemployment rate maintained at 4.1 percent, according to figures revealed by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security on Friday.

The Chinese government targeted creating 9 million new jobs in 2012 and fulfilled the target four months in advance, a better-than-expected result against a backdrop of slowing global economic recovery and downward pressures weighing on the domestic economy.

College graduates will face greater difficulty landing a job in 2013, as 7 million fresh graduates and older graduates who have failed to find employment will converge this year, Yin Chengji, spokesman for the ministry, said at a press conference.

The ministry will prioritize helping them find jobs and start their own businesses, he said.

Commenting on the nation's dwindling working population, Yin said with the accelerating process of urbanization and industry upgrading, labor forces will shift from low-end to high-end industries with improved productivity, and that movement will increase the overall working output.

Yin noted that during the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015), China's labor forces will increase, and the demographic dividend will still exist for a certain period of time.

Also at the conference, the ministry disclosed that the revenue of the nation's social security funds totaled 2.85 trillion yuan (459.6 billion U.S. dollars) last year, an increase of 18.4 percent year on year. Their expenditure rose 22.2 percent to 2.2 trillion yuan.

China's social insurance funds include five parts: basic endowment insurance for seniors, basic medical insurance, unemployment insurance, work-related injury insurance and maternity insurance.

BEIJING, Jan. 18 (Xinhuanet) -- It's just one day out from tomorrow’s data deluge from China, all of which will tell us how the world’s second-largest economy fared in 2012. Analysts see annual growth accelerating to 7.8 percent in the last quarter of 2012. Full story

China Focus: Working-age population shrinkage challenges China's growth

BEIJING, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Despite a rebound in China's fourth-quarter economic growth, a shrink in the country's working-age population has cast a shadow on its future prospects. Full story