Girl graduates queue up for interviews for their jobs with employers at a girl graduate-only job fair in Beijing, capital city of China, March 3, 2010. The fair, specially for female graduates, kicked off on Wednesday, offering over 600 jobs like office clerks of accounting, human resources and customer services. [Xinhua]

A total of 2.89 million new jobs were created in China's urban areas during the first three months this year, said the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS) Friday.

From January to March, the urban unemployment rate fell 0.1 percentage points to 4.2 percent from the full-year figure for 2009, with 9.19 million people registered as unemployed, Yin Chengji, spokesman of the MOHRSS, told a press conference.

The 2.89 million new jobs created was about 32 percent of the full-year job creation target of 9 million, Yin said.

(Xinhua News Agency April 23, 2010)