Jobseekers attend a recruitment fair in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/cnnb.com.cn]

Ningbo in East China's Zhejiang province was ranked fourth nationwide in terms of job prospects in the second quarter of this year, according to a report recently released by online recruitment platform Zhaopin and the China Institute for Employment Research.

The city's CIER index stood at 1.95, only behind Jiaxing, Wenzhou and Quanzhou. The CIER index, a key indicator of China's labor market, is calculated by dividing the number of vacancies offered with the number of job seekers.

Ningbo has seen a stable growth in employment in the first half of this year.

Official statistics from the Ningbo Municipal Bureau of Human Resources and Social Security show that 124,200 new urban jobs were created in the city from January to June, up 23 percent year-on-year. A total of 18,700 unemployed urban residents were hired during the period.

"The city's rather stable growth in employment is due to industrial agglomeration and economic resilience," said a head official from the bureau.

Ningbo's consumer market continued to pick up in the first six months of this year. Its total retail sales of consumer goods during the period reached 216.13 billion yuan, a rise of 19.5 percent, 3.1 percentage points higher than the provincial average. 

Meanwhile, its exports amounted to 358.16 billion yuan, up 28.4 percent year-on-year, while imports expanded 35 percent to 205.73 billion yuan.

Over the same period, the city's actual use of foreign capital surged 42.9 percent year-on-year to $2.18 billion, data from the Ningbo Municipal Bureau of Commerce show.

Efforts in stabilizing employment such as offering various kinds of vocational trainings also played a big part in the employment growth in the city, local authorities said.