Migrants wait for ‘work resumption’
Emerging industries, government support key to shore up employment
A nationwide push to restart the world’s second-largest economy has prompted many to go back to their jobs, but millions of migrant workers in China are finding it hard to get back to normal as they face lower incomes and even job losses despite improvement in the domestic COVID-19 situation.
This vast but vulnerable group can hardly stand the risk of income losses.
Zhang Hong, from Central China’s Henan Province, formerly did renovation work in Beijing, said he has not gone back to work yet as the virus has not disappeared. “Customers are anxious and we are anxious, too, but we are all very cautious in taking the first step.”
“Since I have no income, I can hardly pay my 2,000yuan($282.73) rent in Beijing,” Zhang said on Monday, and he may have to find a cheaper place to live if things don’t move forward.
Zhang is not alone. The pandemic has disrupted the urban employment market, and as of the end of March, 70-80 million people had yet to resume work in China.
Among this group, 70 percent were migrant workers – almost equivalent to the UK’s population, which was 60.36 million in 2019, according to an article published on the official WeChat account of China Finance 40 Forum, an influential non-official think tank.
Rural migrant workers are the major source of employees in labor-intensive industries such as export-oriented manufacturing and small and medium-sized services firms. As the global pandemic threatens many export firms and leads to a delay in the services sector’s reopening, migrant workers are hit the hardest, analysts said.
There are 290 million migrant workers nationwide. About 80 million work in manufacturing, 50-60 million in construction, 20 million in accommodation and catering, 30-40 million in wholesale and retail operations and 30-40 million in residential services and others, according to the think tank.
Most of these industries were hard hit by the epidemic, and many companies cut staff as a result.
The owner of an auto parts company in Nantong, East China’s Jiangsu Province said on Monday that due to decreasing export orders, the firm has to cut costs in the second quarter or it may die.
“Chinese policymakers need to be alert to rising frictional unemployment, which could develop into structural unemployment in the long term, affecting social stability and slowing down a rebound in consumption,” Wang Jun, deputy director of the department of information at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges in Beijing, said on Monday.
China has urged its centrally administered state-owned enterprises to formulate special recruitment plans targeting migrant workers in poor counties via online and offline channels.
Wang warned that China’s employment pressure in the second quarter will be more severe than in the first due to broad slowdowns overseas.
China’s unemployment rate jumped to 5.9 percent in March – better than February’s record high of 6.2 percent, but still worse than the 5.2 percent China recorded in December.