In Dongguan, a major manufacturing city in Guangdong Province, it is getting harder to recruit workers in recent years. And this year, the challenge is even greater, according to a factory manager responsible for recruiting.

In order to deal with labor shortage, some of the factories cooperate with technical schools. The student workers have become one of the major labor sources for the factories. They engage in the same work as the regular workers, but they are ineligible for overtime pay and don't receive social insurance.

The demand for workers in Dongguan and the factories inability to find workers has led to the growth in the last two years of recruitment agencies that are usually known as labor companies. The labor companies get more than a hundred yuan for each recruited worker; however, nowadays, it's rare to recruit more than a hundred workers in a month.

Most migrant workers are now unwilling to work in Dongguan due to soaring inflation and stagnant wages—wages that are lower than that of the Yangtze River Delta region, according to a man surnamed Zhang, who works for a labor company.

Zhang said that when he was in Dongguan in 2006, there were a lot of workers waiting in line outside of each factory applying for jobs. Now there are no lines, and in Zhang's view lower pay is the primary cause for Dongguan's labor shortage.

Chen, who was working for a large Japanese electronics company, said the salaries she and fellow workers got was paltry. And in recent years, the company contracted with schools from different regions bringing in students. "Even the temporary student workers can get higher pay than us", Chen said.

Chen may have gotten that impression, but actually student workers are known to receive worse treatment than the average worker.

Wang Li, 16, is a student worker from Anxiang, Hunan Province. Together with more than 200 other students, she came to Dongguan under a work-study program and has worked for a company for four months. She didn't even know when she started working how much she'd be paid, but it didn't really matter because none of it would go in her pocket. Students' salaries, around 1,500 yuan (US$228) a month, go directly to their schools.

The labor costs are lower for student workers and factories aren't required to buy social insurance for the "temporary" student workers. Also, companies don't need to pay overtime wages for student workers.

This situation is not an isolated to Dongguan. Many companies are hiring student workers—especially larger ones, as they are more competitive in contracting with the schools and the student workers make up a greater proportion of their workers.