Beijing has vowed to keep its unemployment rate within 2.3
percent this year, a local government official said Friday.
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Zhang Xinqing, director of the city labor and social security
bureau, said that Beijing will strive to create 190,000 new job
opportunities, help 170,000 of the existing jobless people find new
jobs, including 50,000 people in their forties and fifties.
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It is predicted that the number of urban jobless people will reach
285,000 this year, 126,000 of whom are migrant workers, people
living on government subsidies and jobless handicapped people.
Vice-mayor Sun Anmin said that major efforts will be made to
help needy people to find new jobs and help jobless rural laborers
to find jobs in non-agricultural sectors.
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As one of the government's efforts to increase employment, a
program with the purpose of helping 300,000 people to find jobs in
three years is going on smoothly in neighborhood communities across
the city.
(Xinhua News Agency January 22, 2005)