The regional capital Lhasa has offered training to prepare first-time job seekers for competition, said Dang Feng, an official with the city's labour and social security bureau.

He said about 356 graduates in Lhasa, about one third of this year's total, are still looking for jobs.

Employment was never an issue during the era of central planning, when only 1 per cent of secondary students gained entry to university and the government assigned everyone a job.

That system changed in 1988 with the first graduate job fair at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. The last guaranteed job was axed in most Chinese cities in 2000.

Ministry of Education statistics show 4.13 million university students graduated this year, three quarters of a million more than last year.

The number of graduates in 2007 will be close to 5 million, about 1.24 million of whom will have no immediate job offers.

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