BEIJING - China's unemployment rate stood at 5.2 percent in September, up slightly from the previous two months as college graduates entered the job market, showed data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday.

The jobless rate for those aged between 25 and 60, the backbone of the labor force, remained stable in September, NBS spokesman Sheng Laiyun told a press conference.

In the first three quarters of this year, China created more new jobs than the government had been aiming to do in the whole year, Sheng said.

Keeping the job market steady is one of the major priorities for the Chinese government. It set a target of creating at least 10 million new jobs in 2015.

This official "surveyed" unemployment rate, based on research in 31 major cities, was first introduced in 2014 to serve as a supplement to the "registered" urban jobless rate after critics questioned the accuracy of the latter for its limited sample.

The surveyed rate was 5.06 percent at the end of June, when the registered rate stood at 4.04.