BEIJING, April 22 -- China's registered unemployment rate in urban areas stood at 4.04 percent at the end of March, down from 4.05 percent at the end of 2015, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said on Friday.

An additional 3.18 million urban jobs were created in the first three months of 2016, said ministry spokesperson Li Zhong at a press conference.

Creating more jobs is one of the priorities for the Chinese government in keeping employment stable as millions of workers face redundancy in enterprise mergers and reorganizations of industries operating over capacity.

China aims to provide more than 10 million new urban jobs in 2016 and keep the registered urban unemployment rate below 4.5 percent, according to the government work report to the annual parliamentary session in March.