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| A labor market in Taizhou, Zhejiang province. Businesses in the Yangtze and Pearl River delta areas are having difficulties recruiting enough workers after the Spring Festival holiday. Pan Kanjun / For China Daily |
A labor shortage is sweeping through both the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta regions, the country's two major economic powerhouses.
LTN Classic, a garment firm in Guangzhou, is looking for more than a dozen sewing workers, but hired only half as many as it needed, as the capital city of South China's Guangdong province expects a shortage of 110,000 workers right after the Lunar New Year holiday.
"We can fill our administrative posts but can hardly get all the general workers we want," design director Zhang Wei said at the company's stand at Guangzhou's first post-holiday job fair, which opened on Wednesday.
General worker hiring has been difficult over the past few years as job opportunities become available in other parts of the country, Zhang said.
His company has been able to meet half of its demands for such workers, leaving part of its capacity idle.
Such workers, who earn 4,000 yuan ($640) to 5,000 yuan a month, have come to the company with newly hired production managers or through friends, Zhang said.
Shanghai faces similar problems finding workers to fill lower-paid positions, as workers' demands have been higher than expected.
Li Huaying, the owner of the Shanghai Litan job agency, has noticed the trend. Li's company holds annual job fairs at the Shanghai Railway Station to recruit migrant workers after the Spring Festival holiday.
"We've got about 2,000 vacancies available at the moment, but few contracts were signed in the past week as some of the migrant workers haven't returned from their hometowns, and some demanded higher-income jobs," Li said.
A majority of the listed vacancies in Li's company offer jobs with a monthly salary of over 2,000 yuan, while most of the applicants require a minimum income of 3,000 yuan.
"It has been difficult for a company to hire an ordinary worker without any specific skills with a monthly salary of 2,000 yuan, a salary that was unacceptable for migrant workers in Shanghai," Li said.
Li added that migrant workers now pay more attention to working conditions, social welfare and leisure time.
Her agency will start this year's fair on Monday because the peak period for job searches will be after Sunday, when the majority of migrant workers will return from their Spring Festival breaks.
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