Labor Shortage: "Panic" Is Pretty Good.

After the Spring Festival, the labor shortage in the southeast coast appears again. "Labor shortage" has become the focus of attention.

In the Midwest, labor-intensive industries are gradually increasing, and labor costs in southeastern coastal areas are rising. Workers and enterprises have been pushed to a crossroads of choice again.

The shortage of labor force is no longer just a matter of whether enterprises can recruit workers. A series of deep-seated contradictions, such as industrial layout, salary level and social security, are gradually emerging under the background of labor shortage.

"

Dalang Town, Dongguan City, Guangdong Province, is an important base for the world's wool weaving industry.

Just after the Spring Festival holiday, reporters in Xiangshan industrial town of Dalang saw that many factories had posted banners or posted notices in front of them.

Many companies offer such conditions as bags, bags and monthly salary of two thousand yuan.

Some companies promise not only to provide free room and board, but also year-end bonus, paid annual leave, paid wedding leave, birthday bonus, social insurance and so on.

The manager of the recruitment department of Dongguan Taizhou textile products Co., Ltd., told reporters that the recruitment conditions offered by the factory even included reimbursement of return tickets, and promised new and skilled workers to raise salaries by 300 yuan and 500 yuan respectively, but even so, the company is still in a state of frequent labor shortage.

The situation in Dongguan is more common throughout the Pearl River Delta, and Guangzhou manpower.

The agency's survey of post employment recruitment intentions of 343 enterprises in Guangzhou revealed that more than 80% of the enterprises were recruited after the holiday, and the recruitment rate was about 10% of the total staff. After a month, the Guangzhou labor force shortfall was expected to reach 150 thousand.

Among them, toys, electronics, textiles and other traditional labor-intensive industries face the biggest gap.

In terms of personnel structure, more manpower gaps are reflected in skilled workers and skilled workers.

In the early January, a survey of labor demand in spring started by the labor department in Baoan District, Shenzhen. 475 of the 523 companies surveyed said they had to recruit workers after the Spring Festival and 153 thousand new recruits.

According to the Labor Department of Baoan District, the labor gap in Baoan District is around 200 thousand.

Face "

Without workers, there is no production, no production, no profit. If we want to recruit workers, we need to pay higher wages and provide more commitments.

For labor-intensive enterprises, the pressure behind the three words of "labor shortage" is far from being simple. It means higher cost and investment.

Zhang Weidong, who runs two precision hardware manufacturing enterprises in Kunshan, Guangdong and Dongguan, told reporters that in recent two years, in order to ensure the normal operation of the enterprise, the wages he paid to the workers has been getting higher and higher in Guangdong.

"Before the completion of 1 million yuan output value is about 80 thousand yuan to pay, now has risen to 120 thousand yuan, 50% of the wage cost increase for those of us who rely mainly on the cost of labor to win the small business pressure is already too big to bear."

The Guangdong Provincial Department of human resources and social security has announced that the minimum wage standard for Guangdong workers will increase by 18.6% on average from March 1st, and Guangzhou's standard will increase to 1300 yuan per month, the highest in the country.

Although the wages of most enterprises have already been far higher than the minimum wage standards of cities, the increase of minimum wage means the increase of overtime pay and social insurance payment base, which also means a sharp rise in costs for enterprises.

{page_break}

Some workers indicated that the minimum wage standards were sharply raised everywhere, and they were asked to improve their treatment.

In addition, rising wages have also led to a surge in wages for many migrant workers.

On the other hand, with the demand for quality of life of young labor force in China, it is still difficult for employees to meet the expectations of employees even if they take the initiative to raise salaries.

On the one hand, the wage expectations of workers are increasing continuously, and on the one hand is the increasing cost pressure of enterprises.

It is imperative to improve the treatment of workers. But ensuring the survival of enterprises is the root of employment. How can we achieve a reasonable balance between the two?

Sun Lijian, vice president of the school of economics of Fudan University in Shanghai, told reporters that for the labor-intensive enterprises that rely on production costs and labor costs, their profit margins are not large. If labor costs rise more, these enterprises will face losses.

It is suggested that local governments can help enterprises share costs, raise wages and retain workers through preferential tax policies.

"Labor shortage" highlights industrial structural contradictions

Faced with increasingly severe labor shortage and rising labor costs, many enterprises are turning their attention to industrial upgrading.

Xin Daping, the boss of Dongguan new creative clothing company, bought ten automatic computer looms last year for 520 thousand yuan. Compared with the original seven or eight machines, each machine needs one worker, now these ten machines can cope with him alone, so he doesn't need to hire workers at all.

For this investment, Xin Daping said, this is also the situation forced, in the past, lack of work, now do not ask for help.

The clothes made by computer looms not only ease the difficulty of employment, but also ensure stable supply.

"Many big factories have also switched to computer looms.

But some small factories do not dare to take this risk because they invest too much in the early stage.

Xin Daping said.

The same technology upgrading also exists in other labor-intensive industries, Zhang Weidong told reporters that in the field of precision metal production in China, many owners have begun to import large quantities of efficient and expensive lathe and apparatus to replace human labor.

Under the forced labor cost, the labor-intensive industry has begun to upgrade, but this "seemingly beautiful" industrial upgrading is often "unbearable" for small and medium-sized enterprises.

"Most of the advanced lathes we buy now are imported from Japan and Taiwan, China, and they invest too much in one time, although they can reduce 10 people's lives to 2 people, but at the same time overdraw the profits in the next few years."

Zhang Weidong told reporters that the industrial upgrading under the pressure of labor cost can ensure the stability of production, but make the capital chain of enterprises tight, and the ability to engage in diversified production and independent innovation is almost contained.

More importantly, most of the domestic labor-intensive industries have problems of overcapacity, and enterprises should only take the way of increasing unit capacity to reduce costs, which is undoubtedly a difficult circle for the long-term development of enterprises.

Many experts have pointed out that the current employment problem in labor-intensive industries has more and more reflected the structural contradictions existing in China's manufacturing industry: low added value of products, single industrial profit point, weak capability of independent innovation and sustainable development.

For the tens of thousands of small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises scattered in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, the employment problem has not only needed local labor departments to organize recruitment and docking activities, but also needs comprehensive efforts from the national and local levels from the rational layout of industrial areas, the effective reduction of corporate burdens, and the improvement of social security.