China has seen continuous employment growth in the first half of 2017, helped by an expanding service sector and an upgrade of the manufacturing sector, official data showed Monday.
Some 7.35 million new jobs were created in urban regions from January to June, up 180,000 from the same period last year, said Xing Zhihong, spokesperson for the National Bureau of Statistics, at a press conference.
That means China has already fulfilled 66.8 percent of its official goal of creating 11 million new jobs this year, Xing said.
Meanwhile, the overall unemployed rate in 31 major Chinese cities stayed below 5 percent in June, he said.
He described China's employment situation as "continuing to improve." A larger share in the economy for the service sector, as well as the upgrade of the manufacturing industry, lent strong support for employment, according to Xing.