Why wages in China are going up...too many jobs and not enough workers.

[dkf]

According to a China Confidential survey in seven provinces, shortages of manufacturing labour are now present almost everywhere, even in rural counties that were once famous for supplying coastal factory towns with migrant workers.

Grassroots research shows that demographic changes, coupled with growing employment opportunities in rural areas and the mass of working-age people who have already migrated, are the main reasons for the spreading labour shortage.

For example, Zhugao, a township in Sichuan Province known for sending rural labor to coastal factories, now sends only around 15,000 workers a year to work in factory towns, down from around 45,000 a decade ago, according to local officials. Of these, only two thirds are aged 16-40, down from almost 100 per cent 10 years ago. Such examples are set to proliferate as China’s demographic dividend dwindles, a process that will intensify with the approach of 2015, when the population between 19 and 65 peaks out.

The shortage that such trends create is hitting employers from coastal Shanghai to several interior provinces. An average monthly workers’ salary in Wenzhou, the coastal business hub, jumped 17 per cent to Rmb1,810 in February from a year earlier, according to the City Career Service Centre. This, however, was not enough to lure enough workers back from the Spring Festival. In the first three weeks of February, the career centre received only 1,951 applications after posting 19,532 jobs.

http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2011/03/25/chinese-wage-inflation-more-to-come/#axzz1QXIMXjUI

[EC]

1. Well, it looks like we've become the gold mine of

cheap labor now. Or at least in the near future.

[anthroman]

2. I would like to know

What does China actually create by itself, how much of the economy is American taken jobs for American based companies?

[dkf]

3. Foxconn plans to increase China workforce to 1.3 million

Taipei, Aug. 19 (CNA) Foxconn Technology Group, a China-based subsidiary of Taiwan's Hon Hai group, said Wednesday it plans to raise its workforce in China to 1.3 million from the current 920,000 over the next 12 months.

Cheng Tien-tsung, deputy chief executive of Foxconn, said his group is migrating from coastal areas to inland China -- such as Chengdu in Sichuan Province and Zhengzhou in Henan Province -- and hiring new employees.

He said the group's Shenzhen base, which is planning to change to a three-shift schedule from the current two shifts, will also need more workers in the short term.

Hon Hai Precision Industry, the world's largest contract maker of electronics products for high-tech giants such as Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, is the parent company of Foxconn Technology Group.

http://focustaiwan.tw/ShowNews/WebNews_Detail.aspx?ID=201008190012&Type=aECO

[bigwillq]

4. Hello.

Welcome to DU! :hi: