The employment market will remain gloomy for "a considerably
long term", with as many as 12 million workers struggling to find a
job every year, according to a report released by the labor
authority yesterday.
It is estimated that 65 percent of the population will be of
working age in the coming 20 years as the children of the baby boom
generation of the 1960s and 1970s enter the job market, said the
report by the Ministry of Labor and Social Securities (MLSS).
Half of the 24 million people who enter the job market every
year will not immediately be able to find work, despite the rapid
growth of the country's gross domestic product, which is expected
to create about 10 million new jobs every year until 2010, said the
report.
The employment outlook is further clouded by the 120 million
rural workers expected to remain idle in the countryside, said the
report.
Despite the apparent over-supply in the labor pool, the MLSS
also stressed in its report that labor shortages have hit factories
in some prosperous regions.
The annual 5 percent increase in the number of migrant workers,
a major factor in the fast pace of urbanization in recent years,
has failed to keep pace with the annual growth in demand for
workers, which has expanded by about 10 to 15 percent a year since
2003, said the report.
As a result, about 45 percent of the enterprises in the Pearl
River Delta and 34 percent in the Yangtze River Delta polled by
MLSS said they did not have enough workers last spring.
Meanwhile, the migrants' growing awareness of their legal and
economic rights has also contributed to the shortage.
About half of the migrants surveyed by the MLSS said they would
be willing to quit their jobs because of "low pay".
The lack of professional training is another factor in the
shortage, said the report.
The report cited a survey by the MLSS earlier this year which
found that 37 percent of all new jobs required a medium level of
skills, but only 13 percent of migrant workers had received formal
job training.
The ministry called for better working environments for workers
as well as improved training programs.
While painting a dismal picture of the employment market, the
report also sought to dispel fears raised by reports that China's
labor supply would dry up by 2010.
A report released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences last
month forecast that the family planning policy had helped slow the
growth of the population.
This indicates that China would be "moving from an era of labor
surpluses into an era of labor shortages."
(China Daily June 15, 2007)