China has seen its job market grow over the past five years, despite pressures posed by the world's largest population, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a report about employment yesterday.

The number of employed workers reached 764 million in 2006, compared to 737.4 million in 2002. That represents an average increase of more than 6.6 million per year.

The statistics show that employment increased in urban areas, while it decreased in rural areas due to the urbanization process. The number of people employed in urban areas increased from 248 million in 2002 to 283 million in 2006, increasing by nearly 9 million people per year. The employment numbers in rural areas, however, decreased from 489 million in 2002 to 481 million in 2006, down more than 2 million people per year.

As the urbanization process continues in China, the total number of employed urbanites has increased proportionally. Urban workers made up 37 percent of the nation's total workforce in 2006, compared to 33.6 percent in 2002.

As more jobs have become available in cities, more people have emigrated from rural areas, and rural populations and employment numbers had decreased accordingly. Rural employment rates dropped to 62.9 percent in 2006, down from 66.4 percent in 2002, according to the NBS report.

The job market has also felt the effects of an increased number of laid-off State employees in the period between 2003 and 2006. Added to this, workers from rural areas seeking employment have flooded into non-agricultural sectors in the cities, causing new pressure on the employment situation in urban areas.

But government policies seem to be easing employment problems, as more and more people are employed every year. In 2006 alone, there were 10 million newly employed workers. And between 2002 and 2006, some 20 million laid-off workers from State-owned enterprises found new jobs, according to the report.