China's Yangtze River Delta region turns inland for easing labor shortages

Governments and businesses in east China's Yangtze River Delta region are going out to recruit migrant workers from the country's interior areas, in an effort to alleviate the severe labor shortages following the Chinese Lunar New Year.

Local labor and social security departments, or the firms themselves, in dozens of cities in the region, where private businesses are flourishing and thus labor demand is huge, went to the country's labor-rich inland areas including provinces of Henan, Jiangxi, Sichuan and Anhui to attract new recruits.

The rich delta region has been suffering from serious labor shortages during the past two years. Currently around one million businesses in its 16 cities report up to 68 percent shortages in skilled workers.

Experts predicted that the region, with its current migrant workers' population standing at 13 million, needs 700,000 to one million more workers every year.

The delta's Zhejiang Province, for example, is short of about 500,000 migrant workers, 35 percent of its total labor demand, said the recent statistics from the provincial labor bureau.

A great number of businesses in the province face a labor shortage bottleneck. The problem is even more paramount in Huzhou and Wenzhou, which are renowned for their flourishing private businesses, said an official at the bureau.

According to a recent survey conducted by Wenzhou-based newspapers, around 70 percent of the public attributed the shortages to the low wages of migrant workers.

As agriculture reaps more profits, the migrant population would rather go back to earn a living by doing farm work than work in cities with low wages, said Cheng Lei, deputy dean of the Management School of Wenzhou University.

Source: Xinhua