Employment for Rural Chinese Migrants on the Rise
Posted on August 15, 2009 by Amalia Benke
Migrant workers install touchpads on computers. Photo: Gdium (flickr)
More than 97 percent of China's 150 million rural migrant workers have found jobs in cities, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article. This is remarkable considering that eight months ago, 18 to 25 million migrant workers were unemployed.
The newly reemployed migrants should boost China's struggling economy. "Itinerant rural workers are the backbone of China's manufacturing and construction industries, with tens of millions crossing the country every year for work," reports the Wall Street Journal. But conditions aren't as good as before the economic crisis. It's reported that many of these migrants are being paid lower wages and the risk for unemployment is still high.
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Welfare of migrant workers is a big concern
The welfare of migrant workers from villages is a big concern, especially with their number rising by 10 million in a matter of months, and their wages being pushed lower as a result. Unless the cities in question are expanding, and more work is being generated, new migrant workers are fated to have the worst tier of accomodations in the cities. Even if the government stimulus has been successful in absorbing unemployed workers back into industries, the ones benefiting directly from the stimulus are rarely the manual workers. The increasing migration of labor towards cities maybe an indication of the fact that China's theory of the wealth trickling down from the cities to the villages may not have much popular support.
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