BEIJING — China has seen a steady recovery in newly added jobs in recent months amid containment of the COVID-19 epidemic, according to the Minister of Human Resources and Social Security.

While employment was affected by the epidemic during the first several months of the year, it has stabilized amid government efforts to add jobs, said Zhang Jinan in an interview with Xinhua.

The country created around a million urban jobs on a monthly basis recently, as compared with only 390,000 newly added jobs in February when the epidemic severely hit the country, Zhang noted.

In the first half of this year, China added a total of 5.64 million urban jobs, accounting for 63 percent of the annual target.

The surveyed unemployment rate in urban areas had been trending down from a peak of 6.2 percent in February to 5.7 percent in June, he noted.

"The gradual recovery of employment in China beat expectations and was a hard-earned result," Zhang said.

The country has rolled out a series of measures, such as cutting social insurance contributions paid by enterprises, to maintain employment stability.

The ministry will continue efforts to ensure jobs for key groups, including college graduates and migrant workers, Zhang said.

According to this year's government work report, China aims to add over 9 million new urban jobs and keep the surveyed urban unemployment rate around 6 percent.