(Yicai Global) June 16 -- China’s unemployment rate remained the same in May as it was in April and, as the economy continues to rebound, there is good support for a stable job market, the spokesperson for the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday.

The country’s unemployment rate was 5.2 percent in May, the same as the previous month, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics yesterday.

The jobless rate in the main working population, aged between 25 to 59, continues to drop, said Fu Linghui, who is also director of the NBS’ Department of Statistics. It dipped 0.1 percentage point in May from April to 4.1 percent and has fallen for the past three months, indicating that employment is generally stable.

And the unemployment rate of migrant workers in the cities is also declining. In May, it dropped 0.2 percentage point from April to 4.9 percent and has also been on the slide since March, showing that most migrant workers are able to find work.

But the unemployment rate among young people aged 16 to 24 was high at 20.8 percent, up from 20.4 percent the previous month. There are 96 million people in this age group and most of them are students, Fu said. A third of them, around 33 million, entered the job market and 6 million are still looking for work.

The jobless rate will continue to fall as more well-educated young people find jobs, Wang Pingping, director of the NBS' Population and Employment Census Department, said in April.

Employment trends among the main workforce aged between 25 and 59 differ depending on their educational background. The jobless rate among those with a Bachelor’s degree and above edged up 0.2 percentage point in May from February, while that of people who studied up to high school dipped 0.8 percentage point and that of those who graduated from junior high school or below sank 1.3 percentage point.

Editor: Kim Taylor