The domestic job market embraced positive growth in the third quarter following the central government's efforts to stabilize employment during the coronavirus pandemic, a senior official of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said.

"The nation's recruitment demand rose by 1.1 percent year-on-year in the third quarter, which is of great significance as the figure had fallen sharply by 25.9 percent year-on-year in the first quarter," Vice-Minister Li Zhong said at a news conference organized by the State Council Information Office on Wednesday.

Li said that even this slight improvement was a hard-fought gain since the nation's economy was severely affected by the domestic coronavirus epidemic.

"Thankfully, the economy has been in recovery since people resumed working. Stimulus policies by the government have also given stronger support to companies－the main entities of the market," he said.

According to Li, the government has offered assistance to companies to help ease their hiring pressure.

For example, authorities have cut companies' payments for unemployment, endowment and other work-related insurance for workers. Further, small and medium-sized enterprises were exempted from such payments until the end of this year.

The government also lowered standards for returning the companies' unemployment insurance as a reward for endeavoring to keep jobs, according to Li Zhong.

"Through the end of September, we returned 85 billion yuan ($12.7 billion)," he said.

Though rocked recently because of the pandemic, the nation's job market did improve steadily during the current 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), which is nearing its end.

Ministry data show that from 2016 to 2019, the nation created 13 million urban jobs. The government also helped over 25 million laid-off workers find new jobs during that period, as well as 8 million people who had problems landing a job.

As an important part of the job market, the population of migrant workers is also increasing. By the end of 2019, there were 290 million such workers.