China's migrant workers born in the late 1970s and 1980s are
refusing to follow in their parents' footsteps and do tough and
dirty work in China's booming cities, according to a report about
migrant workers.
Their choices have led to a lack of migrant workers in three of
China's major manufacturing bases: the Pearl River Delta, the
Yangtze River Economic Zone and the Bohai Bay Economic Circle in
north China, said a report carried on a migrant worker website
(www.sinomen.cn).
The report -- based on a survey of over 5,000 migrant workers in
20 cities in the regions-- said that 71 percent of migrant workers
under the age of 30 preferred service work in restaurants and
hotels or skilled work with decent pay.
The report compiled figures from city labor departments to
indicate that in the first quarter of the year, only 180,000
migrant workers filled 520,000 urgent job vacancies in the
cities.
The website was set up in August 2005 by a consulting company
with support from labor authorities in east China's Zhejiang Province. Besides providing employment
and work-skill training information to migrant workers, it carries
out market surveys and analyses for government bodies.
The report said that new attitudes among young rural laborers
help explain the current shortage of migrant workers in the
manufacturing bases in China's coastal regions.
Zhang Huan, a 16 year-old junior high school graduate from
Fushui Village in central China's Hubei Province, told the Xinhua
reporter that he had learnt from the experiences of many of his
fellow villagers who were disappointed by exhausting, low-paid jobs
in cities.
He did not go to the city to try his luck directly after
finishing his nine-year compulsory education, like young
job-seekers from the countryside in the past. Instead, he opted to
attend a short-term training course on drilling machine skills in
his hometown before going to cities.
The report said that young migrant workers have higher
expectations about their city life than the older generations. As
China upgrades its industries, the number of skilled workers needed
will rise from current 80 million to 110 million in the next five
years. So young migrant workers are keen to improve their work
skills.
Rural laborers began to flood into cities in the 1980s looking
for simple manual jobs. There are now about 140 million
farmer-turned migrant workers in Chinese cities, half the workforce
in the country's construction, mining and textile industries and in
unpopular service work such as cleaning and garbage collection.
The report shows that as the older generation of China's migrant
workers enter their 40s and 50s, they are more likely to face
unemployment in cities.
Xin Dayao, a 40-year-old migrant worker from Hubei has spent the
last eight years doing simple manual work on construction sites in
Wuhan, the provincial capital of Hubei Province.
"I earned 700 yuan (US$87.5) a month. With no education and no
skills, just muscles, I felt that people looked down on me," he
said.
The humiliation gave him the courage to change his fate by
learning. Even though he was in his 40s, he devoted his spare time
for several months to studying like a freshman in order to get a
national plasterer's certificate.
"As I grow older, skills and knowledge are the only way to
preserve my life in the city," said Xin. With the professional work
skill certificate, he can expect to earn an extra 500 yuan or 600
yuan (US$62.5-70) per month.
(Xinhua News Agency October 21, 2006)