Xinhua Insight: Migrant workers forced home amid economic downturn
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E-mail Xinhua, July 26, 2012
BEIJING, July 26 (Xinhua) -- After spending nearly half a year looking for a job in vain, construction worker Zhang Xun has packed up and is heading back home.
Zhang, a villager from north China's Hebei province, has traveled to several big cities, including Beijing and Tianjin, with some fellow villagers trying to get a job on a construction site, but not one of them has succeeded.
"It seems that I have to go back to the farm, and that's at least better than staying away with no income at all," he said.
Zhang's experience is shared by many migrant workers in China's manufacturing and construction sectors at a time when the country is facing an economic slowdown amid dwindling external demands and the central government's measures to tame the runaway real estate prices.
China has tightened its curbs on the property sector since 2010 as home prices rocketed beyond the reach of average wage earners. The government has restricted home purchases in several cities while requiring higher down payments and introducing property taxes.
The moves have not only cooled the market but also led to construction workers being laid off.
Workers in export companies are another group who are suffering, as the lingering European sovereign debt crisis and a fragile U.S. economic recovery have decreased external demand for Chinese goods and services.
Many company owners in the eastern provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangsu, China's major manufacturing bases, said that they are facing a situation that is even worse than the global financial crisis.
Cai Huantian, president of a garment firm in Zhejiang, said orders the company has received this year were more than 30 percent less than that of the same period last year, and the average single order amount is 70 percent less than last year.
The eurozone is China's largest export destination. Statistics from the country's customs shows China's exports to the eurozone were 163.06 billion U.S. dollars during the first half of this year, down 0.8 percent from the same period last year.
Cai said what's worse is that some European clients have started getting their clothes made back home or in nearby European countries instead of China.
Wang Jianshu, manager of a craft enterprise in Zhejiang, said the rise of the cost of labor and raw materials and the appreciation of Chinese currency had already squeezed the company's profit margin last year, while this year's slackening orders is further exacerbating the enterprises' financial stress.
"The shrinking of the orders have not only affected the survival of the manufacturers, but also led to unemployment of migrant workers and forced them back home," he said.
However, some company owners said that the surplus of the migrant workers did not indicate an end of the labor shortage that has been haunting the country in recent years.
According to Cai some clothing manufacturers have been striving to move up the value chain, and they still are facing a lack of skilled workers who understand design and marketing.
Local governments have been exploring ways to help the unemployed migrant workers and the struggling businesses.
The Department of Human Resources and Social Security of the local government of Henan said it will carry out vocational training for returned workers and adopt some preferential policies to facilitate their self-employment.
The export city of Ningbo in Zhejiang province has announced several policies to boost local small businesses, including providing special funds to foster small firms and giving tax rebates to companies with lower income.
Wu Jiang, head of Chinese Academy of Personnel Science, said the unemployment of the migrant workers is linked to China's industrial restructuring.
The demand for skilled workers is on the rise, while the workers who have long been working in the labor intensive industries may find it hard to cope with the new situation, he said.
Experts said the central and local governments should come up with measures to aid the migrant workers and small firms if the unemployment situation gets worse. Enditem
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