By J.R. Wu Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

BEIJING (Dow Jones)--Creating new jobs for the record number of graduates and the ranks of jobless migrant workers this year is in some ways giving China a chance to help rebalance its economic growth, a senior official in China for the labor agency of the United Nations said Wednesday.

One key aim of the government's CNY 4 trillion stimulus plan is to create jobs amid the economic slowdown. But the plan itself won't be able to absorb all the surplus workers so other piecemeal measures are also being launched and studied.

The government's job creation schemes won't work well if funding for them doesn't reach the local and grassroots level soon, Constance Thomas, the China and Mongolia director of the International Labour Organization, a U.N. agency, told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview.

'It can't happen without concerted policies and the money to back them. I think the government can do it, but I think they are going to have to do a little more to make it happen,' Thomas said.

Despite the explosive loan growth China has seen since late last year when Beijing first launched its CNY4 trillion stimulus program and unleashed credit into the economy, Thomas said financing to help people who want to start their own businesses, for example, has yet to trickle down to those who need it.

Some critics of the government's stimulus plan point out that the infrastructure investment-heavy program is channeling money to the big state-owned enterprises and banks' fear of rising nonperforming loans also puts their lending bias on big projects and companies. That leaves the smaller companies and potential entrepreneurs parched for credit.

'So the Ministry of Labor's policies are not going to be effective if the Ministry of Finance and the banks are not following along to support them - that's what we call policy coherence and that's what needs to be improved,' she said.

'The money better be there by the time the graduates come out of school,' Thomas said.

The employment situation in China remains severe as the domestic economy goes through its worst growth slump in at least a decade. China's labor minister Yin Weimin said Wednesday that the urban registered jobless rate worsened at the end of March to 4.3%, from 4.2% at the end of last year, its first annual rise in five years.

A record number of new graduates, around 6.1 million, this year and many more millions of migrant workers looking for jobs are putting pressure on Beijing to come up with ways to keep them busy.

'(The government is) taking very proactive measures to ensure that the numbers of these people sitting around are minimized,' said Thomas. 'This might be a very interesting way to do some rebalancing (in the economy),' she said.

A new course called Know About Business, or KAB, was rolled out just last year in about 100 universities as part of the government's employment efforts to orient graduates to think about running their own startups instead of taking the traditional route of going to work for a company, said Thomas. The KAB will be expanded, she said.

Policymakers are also looking at ways to send teaching and medical assistants to rural areas in China, or sending new graduates abroad to places like Africa to support international development, said Thomas.

ILO has been asked to target new graduates in a 'green' jobs promotion program that aim to harness the interest of young minds to add to, restore or support environmental protection, Thomas said.

The government is also looking at ways to help migrant workers, traditionally from agricultural areas who go to cities in search of low-skill work, add to their skills.

If companies shutter on the east coast, but pop up in the inland provinces, or if second- and third-tier cities begin to boom like Beijing and Shanghai, that also will prompt jobs programs and training to be adjusted to fit the environment it is needed in.

'You have to follow the feet of the migrant. They will move wherever they hear there are employment opportunities and training,' Thomas said.

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