After The Spring Festival This Year, The Problem Of "Shortage Of Migrant Workers" Has Once Again Highlighted.

Affected by the rising cost of living in coastal areas, the increasing demand for labor in the inland provinces, and the fact that the new generation of migrant workers are unwilling to leave their homes too far away, the problem of "shortage of migrant workers" has been highlighted again after the Spring Festival this year.

In response, experts said that the pfer of surplus rural labor force in China has come to an end. "Lewis turning point" has arrived. This will have a profound impact on wages, prices, consumption, and economic structure and macro policies.

Experts say they are trapped in the current strict household registration system, high cost of living in cities, and migrant workers.

reality

The China Textile Association's report on the overall human resources in the Pearl River Delta indicates that there will be more than 2 million workers in the region this year.

Hubei province human resources and social security department recently statistics, at present, there are 2.12 enterprises in the province urgently need to employ 560 thousand people. The lack of work is mainly characterized by lack of industry, lack of structure and seasonal labor shortage.

Zhang Yi, a researcher with the Institute of population and labor economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that the European and American economies are gradually recovering from China.

According to statistics, the reserve force of migrant workers has decreased by about 6000000 per year compared with the previous peak, and almost three people in three years.

In response, Dr. Qin Hailin, vice president of Sai Di consulting, said that on the surface, the "shortage of migrant workers" was due to economic growth, increased labor demand, and short-term imbalance between supply and demand.

But exploring the underlying reason is the end of the pfer of rural surplus labor force in China, and the "turning point of Lewis" has arrived.

The so-called Lewis turning point means that in the two yuan economic structure, before the loss of surplus agricultural labor force, the society can continuously supply the labor force needed by industrialization, while real wages will not rise.

Until industrialization has absorbed the surplus labor clean, if we want to continue to absorb the labor force, it is necessary to raise the wage level, otherwise the agricultural labor will not enter the industry.

This critical point is called "Lewis inflection point".

In fact, as early as 2006, the problem of "shortage of migrant workers" gradually appeared in many parts of China. In 2008, the phenomenon was temporarily disappearing due to the impact of the international financial crisis. But with the recovery of the economy, the demand for labor increased. Since the second half of 2009, the phenomenon of "shortage of migrant workers" has come into sight again. According to the 2009 peasant workers monitoring report released by the National Bureau of statistics, the number of migrant workers in the eastern region decreased by 8.9% in 2009.

Especially in the Pearl River Delta region, the number of migrant workers in this area decreased by 22.5% compared with 2008 in 2009.

"From the above data, we can see clearly that along with the industrialization process of the whole country," Lewis turning point "has come to us.

Qin Hailin said.

Han Jun, Minister of rural development of the State Council Development Research Center, said at the 2010 China Development Summit Forum that "recruitment difficulties will be normalized, and rural areas will no longer be a reservoir for the supply of surplus labor".

Cai Fang, a professor of population at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said: "if there is no clear point in the" Lewis turning point ", we can say that the Chinese economy has entered the" Lewis pition "interval.

The structural surge of pay increases gradually.

In order to deal with the labor pains caused by "labor shortage", many enterprises have put out various means such as "family card" and "treatment card" to retain workers.

For example, charter flights or package buses directly send workers back home. Before the Spring Festival, they send red packets, build apartments for migrant workers, promise to improve welfare benefits, and so on, and prepare for the normal operation of enterprises in the future.

After the Spring Festival in the year of the rabbit, some provinces and cities where migrant workers have been gathered are also using the "raise salary" to recruit enough labor force.

Cheng Fengyuan, President of the Guangzhou Association of Taiwanese businessmen, said that the salaries of Taiwanese funded enterprises this year will be generally higher than 18% or more over the same period last year.

A person in charge of the employment agency in the Yangtze River Delta region said that the monthly salary provided by enterprises this year was generally 20% higher than the same period last year.

In Shandong Province, the wages and allowances for a waiter in a downtown restaurant in Binzhou add up to 2500 yuan a month.

Some enterprises in Dongguan even used the "back to work start Award" which is close to the salary of one month to attract migrant workers to return to the post after the Spring Festival.

In this regard, expert analysis pointed out that the "Lewis turning point" is an inevitable consequence of the rise in labor costs.

In fact, since the middle of last year, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Fujian, Shanghai, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanxi, Shandong, Hubei, Hubei, Hubei and post have increased the minimum wage standard in more than 10 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, with the adjustment range of over 10%, and some of the local governments have increased by more than 20%.

Under this impetus, the income growth of rural residents increased significantly last year.

According to the data released by the National Bureau of statistics, 2010 is the fastest growing year of farmers' income since 1985, and the wage income of farmers is as high as 17.9%.

However, for a long time, the average wage increase of our workers is far below the increase of GDP.

Chen Zhiwu, a famous economist and a lifelong professor of finance at Yale University, analyzed the proportion of Chinese labor remuneration from GDP to 39.74% from 1993 to 2007. That is to say, the proportion of laborers' income in the total national income is getting lower and lower. Therefore, the structural characteristics of this round of wage rise are obvious. 49.49%.

"With the advent of" Lewis turning point ", China's labor force is no longer as unlimited as in previous years, and cheap Chinese labor force is no longer" cheap ".

Qin Hailin believes that in the process of China's industrialization, the rise of labor costs in cities inevitably corresponds to the rising of agricultural labor opportunity cost.

That is to say, we must raise wages to maintain the supply of labor.

This phenomenon has been reflected in the phenomenon of "recruitment difficulty" and "labor shortage" repeatedly appearing in coastal areas and even the Middle East region in recent years.

Trend of urban and rural labor force gradually short of {page_break}

Zhang Yi believes that China's overall population structure has changed, and there are several major trends: first, the less the supply of younger migrant workers is; the two is that with the expansion of enrollment in senior secondary schools, migrant workers in junior high schools and primary schools are basically gone. For labor-intensive enterprises with low education level, recruitment is becoming more and more difficult. Three, the industrial pfer in the central and western regions is becoming more and more serious. Many labor intensive enterprises have been pferred from coastal areas to the central and western regions, and the trend of local labor pfer is becoming more and more obvious. Therefore, recruitment in coastal areas is more difficult than in the mainland.

Qin Hailin believes that the trend of labor shortage in the future will continue, because the current household registration system, the high cost of living in cities, and the plight faced by migrant workers in social security, medical care and children's schooling have led to more and more migrant workers choosing to leave the city, return to their hometown, or to get jobs in relatively small cities which are relatively close to home. Now many small and medium-sized cities are developing rapidly.

Therefore, the potential of rural labor force to be excavated in the future is gradually decreasing, and the demographic dividend is gradually fading away. It is expected that the labor market gap will be bigger in the future.

The "employment difficulty" may even evolve into a long-term and integral problem that the Chinese government needs to solve in the "12th Five-Year" period.

Therefore, how to solve the problem of labor difficulties that may exist for a long time, Zhang suggests that on the one hand, we should upgrade and upgrade the low-end industries, so that machines, technologies and capital intensive will replace labor intensive. On the other hand, cities should introduce policies to enable migrant workers and citizens to enjoy equal public services and attract farmers into urban employment.

In addition, the problem of agricultural labor shortage is gradually emerging as migrant workers pour into cities.

Zhu Qizhen, director of the Institute of farmers' studies at China Agricultural University, found last year that the shortage of agricultural labor is very serious.

He believes that to solve the problem of agricultural labor shortage, one is to promote two-way flow of labor in urban and rural areas; the two is to mechanization in rural areas where conditions are available; the three is to promote the development of cooperatives and modern agriculture; four, to improve the socialized service system of agriculture and pform the mode of agricultural production.

"The shortage of urban and industrial labor is related to agriculture. If agriculture can save labor force, there will still be some room for rural labor to be excavated."

Zhu Qizhen said.