GUANGZHOU, Sept. 15 (Xinhua) -- China's private enterprises employed 120 million people by September this year, up 9.5 percent from the same month a year ago, said a senior official on Saturday.

"The private sector of the economy is a main avenue of employment and re-employment in China," said Zhong Youping, deputy minister of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.

Zhang made the remarks at a forum on Chinese and Japanese small and medium-sized enterprises held in Guangzhou of south China's Guangdong province.

Developing the private sector would help increase job opportunities and enable economic growth and employment to boost each other, said Zhang.

Labor-intensive firms and the service sector could absorb a lot of laid-off workers and college graduates, he added.

Last year China's industrial and commercial authorities helped 2.54 million unemployed people find jobs in the private sector and nearly half of the country's new graduates entered private firms.