China's 2013 urban unemployment rate at 4.1%

BEIJING - China's urban registered unemployment rate stood at 4.1 percent in 2013, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said Friday.

The unemployment rate edged up to 4.05 percent at the end of the fourth quarter, from 4.04 percent at the end of the previous three-month period, ministry spokesman Li Zhong said at a press conference.

A total of 13.1 million new jobs were created in urban areas last year, and 5.66 million people were re-employed after losing work, according to the ministry.

Gross revenue of social insurance funds increased 13.8 percent year on year to 3.29 trillion yuan ($539.03 billion), while gross expenditure totalled 2.65 trillion yuan, up 19.6 percent from a year ago, Li said.

China's social insurance funds contain five parts, namely basic pension funds, basic medical insurance, unemployment insurance, work-related injury insurance and maternity insurance.

The country trained more high level professionals last year by recruiting 14,000 post-doctoral researchers and training 15,000 technicians, as well as building 644 new research workstations.

According to the ministry's data, 20.49 million subsidized job trainings were conducted in 2013, and registered urban jobless trainees amounted to 3.98 million.

Meanwhile, labor relations were improved.

In 2013, the minimum wage standard in 27 regions was lifted by an average 17 percent. Labor security supervision organizations investigated 418,600 illegal cases, inspected 2.02 million employers and urged contracts with 5.12 million employees, which recovered salaries of 26.85 billion yuan and social insurance of 3.48 billion yuan.