The urban unemployment rate in Beijing City is estimated to be 2.21 percent in 2005, an official with the city's labor and social security authorities said Wednesday.

At the end of 2005, employed people in Beijing reached 8.54 million compared with 6.193 million at the end of 2000, said ZhangXinqing, director of the Beijing Municipal Department of Labor and Social Security.

Beijing saw the reemployment of 177,000 people last year, Zhang said. In the five-year-period from 2001 to 2005, a total of 800,000 unemployed people found jobs in Beijing.

"We have made great efforts to raise the employment rate," Zhang said, citing the 649,600 job positions the government helped create in communities in the past five years as an example.

The department also helped unemployed people start up small businesses and trained 300,000 surplus rural laborers in practical skills in the past five years.

This year, Beijing will strive to keep urban unemployment rate within 2.5 percent, ensure first employment of 300,000 people, and help 180,000 laid-off people find jobs, Zhang said.

China aims to keep registered urban unemployment rate below 4.6 percent in 2006, official data show.

(Xinhua News Agency January 5, 2006)