Beijing has vowed to keep its unemployment rate within 2.3 percent this year, a local government official said Friday.
  
Zhang Xinqing, director of the city labor and social security bureau, said that Beijing will strive to create 190,000 new job opportunities, help 170,000 of the existing jobless people find new jobs, including 50,000 people in their forties and fifties.
   
It is predicted that the number of urban jobless people will reach 285,000 this year, 126,000 of whom are migrant workers, people living on government subsidies and jobless handicapped people.

Vice-mayor Sun Anmin said that major efforts will be made to help needy people to find new jobs and help jobless rural laborers to find jobs in non-agricultural sectors.
  
As one of the government's efforts to increase employment, a program with the purpose of helping 300,000 people to find jobs in three years is going on smoothly in neighborhood communities across the city.

(Xinhua News Agency January 22, 2005)