China's most senior leaders have urged officials across the country to match words with action by creating new jobs, saying a failure to tackle unemployment could lead to unrest and damage the country's modernisation drive.

President Hu Jintao told a weekend symposium the country faced a grave jobless problem and must take concrete steps to resolve it, the official China Daily said yesterday.

Ten million new job-seekers were expected to enter the labour force this year, competing with over six million laid-off workers and eight million people registered as unemployed, it said.

"Creating jobs for the nation's laid-off workers is in the interests of all of the people and the nation's reform and development strategy," it quoted the president as saying.

The country's official jobless rate rose to 4.2 per cent at the end of June from 3.8 per cent a year earlier as the Sars outbreak took its toll on the world's sixth-biggest economy.

China is aiming to keep the unemployment rate, which covers only urban workers who have registered with authorities, below 4.5 per cent this year.

Analysts believe the actual rate is closer to 10 per cent. Premier Wen Jiabao was quoted as saying at the meeting that officials at various levels of government must strive to fulfil unemployment targets.

Analysts said the symposium graced by China's president and economic tsar added gravitas to the unemployment discussion but was mainly a reminder to cadres about the urgent need for job creation.

"The government emphasised it again because the problem has not been solved," a professor specialising in labour issues at People's University, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.

Thousands of laid-off workers in the northeastern "rust belt" region of China stormed the streets early last year, railing against corruption, unpaid wages and benefits.