BEIJING, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- China's State Council, or Cabinet, on Wednesday issued a plan to boost employment during the 2011-15 period, which aims to create 45 million jobs and keep the registered urban unemployment rate within 5 percent.

Government authorities will work to spur employment while improving the employment structure and improve regulations to protect workers' rights and benefits, according to the plan.

A total of 57.71 million new jobs were created in urban areas and 45 million people in the rural surplus labor force were transferred to new jobs during the 2006-10 period, official data shows.

By the end of 2011, China's urban unemployment rate stood at 4.1 percent, the same as a year earlier.

The country also plans to create jobs for 40 million people in the rural surplus labor force during the 2011-15 period.

But China's job market conditions will be "complicated" in the five-year period, as the country faces increasing pressure in creating more job opportunities, according to the plan.

In 2002, China's urban residents will require 25 million jobs, a million more than the average level during the 2006-10 period, according to earlier forecast of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MHRSS).

The picture is likely to become further complicated if economic growth continues to decelerate. China's economy expanded 9.2 percent in 2011 from a year earlier, down from 10.3 percent in 2010, said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

In the fourth quarter last year, economic growth slowed to a 10-quarter low of 8.9 percent year-on-year, according to NBS data.

Structural problems, like employees' skills not matching labor market demand, are likely to worsen in the coming years, according to the document.

Employers in many parts of the country have been suffering from a lack of available experienced workers, especially skilled ones in the manufacturing and service sectors. At the same time, many college graduates are having problem finding satisfactory jobs.

Official estimates put the number of college graduates in 2012 at 6.8 million, more than six times of that in the early 2000s.

The government will better manage the job market, provide more training programs, and install more effective unemployment monitoring, it said.

The government also pledged to deepen reform in income distribution and maintain an average 13 percent growth annually in the nation's minimum wage standards during the five-year period, to keep the standard in most regions higher than 40 percent of the average wage of local urban employees.

China has managed to raise its minimum wage standards by an average of 12.5 percent year-on-year during the 2006-10 period.

The government will implement a more proactive employment policy by providing more fiscal, taxation and financial support, said the document.

Local authorities should give priorities to the development of industries that provide more job opportunities, with more funding flowing to the service sector, labor-intensive industries, as well as small and micro-enterprises, it said.

Meanwhile, improvements will be made on taxation policies that help with the employment of collage graduates, migrant workers and other groups with employment difficulty, according to the plan.