BEIJING - China has witnessed a growing number of college graduates starting businesses over the past years with the help of government, according to the educational research company MyCOS Institute.

In 2015 alone, 204,000 college graduates started their own businesses, accounting for 3 percent of the total, however, only 1.2 percent of college graduates chose to start businesses in 2009, it said in a report.

Despite a continued economic slowdown, China's job market for college students remained stable, with 91.7 percent of college graduates getting jobs within six months of graduation in 2015, it said.

The average monthly income of graduates in 2016 was 3,988 yuan (over $586), higher than the average monthly disposable income of 2,801 yuan for urban residents, it said.

It showed that private companies and small and medium-sized enterprises are more likely to attract graduates.

In addition, knowledge-intensive industries such as information and education employ more and more graduates, but labor-intensive industries like building and manufacturing hire less graduates.

Graduates of logistics management, electrical engineering and automation, as well as software engineering, lead others in the job market.

It is more difficult for graduates of history and physics to find a job after graduation, it said. The employment of college graduates matters to China's social stability, as a total of 7.95 million college students are expected to graduate in 2017, according to the Ministry of Education.