The job market, battered since the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome earlier this year, began to recover in the third quarter, according to the Ministry of Personnel.

　　The ministry's statistics show that in July-September, the job markets in 37 major cities across the country registered 2.358 million jobs and 5.164 million job seekers, a job/candidate ratio of 1:2.19, compared with 1:2.48 in April-June.

　　Jobs in the top 10 professions on the recruiting list, including those related to marketing, engineering accounted for 68.8 percent of the total posts and attracted 57.7 percent of the total job seekers.

　　The number of people seeking jobs relating to media, foreign languages, education and finance was twice the number of available jobs, but demand for jobs related to enterprise management and marketing remained higher than the number of applicants.

　　The total number of employers, posts and job seekers registered in these job markets increased by 52.8 percent, 64.5 percent and 45.3 percent, respectively, on a quarterly basis.

　　People with college and postgraduate degrees made up a significant percentage of job hunters.

　　Meanwhile, the 10 major job Websites of the country registered 1.01 million posts provided by 107,000 employers and 1.88 million job seekers.

　　In the west, the number of posts and job hunters increased by 18 percent and 10 percent, respectively, from the second quarter of the year.

　　As the most populous country in the world, China faces a pressing unemploy-ment problem. This year, 24 million people are expected to need jobs. They include 10 million new job seekers such as college and technical school graduates, 6 million workers laid off from state-owned and collective enterprises, and 8 million registered jobless people, according to statistics from the Ministry of Labor and Social Security.

　　In rural areas, there are 150 million redundant laborers who need jobs.

　　The government is encouraging job creation. Some 8.12 million people found jobs in the first nine months this year, including 6.5 million newly created jobs.

　　This represented the fulfillment of 81 percent of the government employment target for creating 8 million new jobs for the jobless and laid-off workers this year.