Chinese Migrant Workers Lose Jobs
Written by Takeru
Twenty million Chinese migrant workers have joined the many around the globe who have lost their jobs due to our economic turmoil. The number of Chinese migrant workers lost is said to be three times greater than what had been suggested initially. According to a recent survery study, that was carried out in more than 10 provinces, close to 15% of the total migrant labor pool is currently unemployed.
Every year, somewhere between five to seven million workers from rural areas look for work in China's biggest cities. The labor pool in China is reported to have around 130 million migrant workers. Many fear that the large number of the unemployed could lead to soical unrest.
"If we put these figures together, we have roughly 25 to 26 million rural migrant workers who are now coming under pressure for employment," said Chen Xiwen who is the director of the Central Rural Work Leading Group, which helps in providing recommendations for China's leaders on policy for the countryside, where the population of rural residents is well above 700 million.
Chen's fellow researchers have gone to see around 150 villages all over China to gain better perspective of the effects of the spreading economic unease on the people. From what the researchers have gathered, the number of unemployed migrant workers is much greater than what was previously indicated by the director of the National Bureau of Statistics last month.
Reporters were told, by Ma Jian Tang in January, that nearly 5% of the country's 130 million migrant workers had returned to their villages after losing their jobs. However, the conditions differ in many parts of the country. A recent report in the well-known Caijin magazine, indicated that 10 workers from Guangxi, a poor province in southern China, had returned home unemployed. The magazine then went on to suggest that the situation was nearly as bad as central China's province of Hubei.
"Maintaining stable and quite fast economic development is the main task for 2009's economic work," said Zhou Yongkang, China's security chief, in the Chinese Communist Party journal Seeking Truth. Officals were given the word to do what they can to resolve problems before they escalate and provoke protests.
Because of a recent government document on rural policy, a many farmers will find hardship in the coming year because "shocks to agricultural and rural development are constantly emerging." For officials, this causes a concern for their aim to boost domestic consumption to try to strengthen the faltering economic growth.
On the other hand, city-side family members who send remittances to their loved ones are often a big help in improving the living standards in the countryside.
The government announced a 4,000bn yuan ($586bn) stimulus package last autumn, which aims to extend the electricity grid, subsidize the purchase of domestic appliances and extend rural access to healthcare and spending. However, a number of economists believe that it all won't be enough to convince people to spend.
Even with the optimistic hope of many in the stimulus package, others have warned that the number of unemployed migrant workers could be on the conservative side and that there may lie worse ahead.
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Last Updated on 30 November 2009
