Guangdong province facing shortage of workers
February 27, 2012 Category Macro-economy, Weekly
Guangdong province needs one million more workers, with a shortfall of about 200,000 in Shenzhen, 110,000 in Guangzhou and 80,000 in Foshan. A survey at Dongguan’s railway station after the Lunar New Year break found that about 1.2 million migrant workers had returned to the city, down nearly 20% on the number who returned last year. In one township, Humen, businesses say they are more than 100,000 workers short. Shenzhen has announced plans to hold 500 recruitment fairs between February 11 and the end of April to fill over 500,000 vacancies in the city. But about half the recruitment managers from a total of 100 enterprises at a job fair last week left before it ended because there were not enough job-seekers. Wu Wei, in charge of recruitment at a supermarket chain, said it had hoped to recruit 200 people but only found four. Another recruitment manager, from a shoe factory, said: “We could recruit 200 migrant workers a day before but now we have to spend at least a week or more to reach the same goal.” Electronics manufacturer Foxconn announced a basic monthly salary of CNY2,200 – CNY700 or 46% more than the city’s minimum wage – to fill 30,000 vacancies at its Shenzhen plant. In Xintang, Guangzhou, home to the world’s largest contract producers of jeans, more than 10 factories have shut down this month and more than two-thirds of the others have had to drop orders because of a lack of workers. With costs soaring on all fronts, the labour problem has worsened the plight of manufacturers already operating on thin profit margins. Dr Liu Kaiming, who researches labor issues at Shenzhen’s Institute of Contemporary Observation, warns that demographic trends will only increase the labor shortage as China’s family planning policy resulted in fewer births in the 1980s and 1990s.
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