China achieves over half of annual employment goal by May

BEIJING -- Half of China's employment objective this year has been achieved in the first five months, with the employment situation generally stable, said the National Bureau of Statistics.

China had created 5.97 million new urban job opportunities by the end of May 2019, finishing 54 percent of the plan for the whole year, NBS data showed.

The national surveyed urban unemployment rate stood at 5 percent in May 2019, the same as that of April. The surveyed urban unemployment rate of people aged 25 to 59 years old declined for the third consecutive month, down 0.2 percentage points to 4.5 percent, while that of 31 major cities went flat at 5 percent.

Average weekly working time of enterprise employees nationwide increased, up 0.5 hours to 46.3 hours year on year.