Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
COVID-19 lockdowns leave workers in China locked out
After more than a month in lockdown, Zeng Jialin could finally return to the Shanghai auto parts factory where he had worked. He was about to be released from a quarantine facility, having recovered from COVID-19, and was desperate to make up wages he had missed.
But on the day he was supposed to be released, someone in the isolation facility tested positive again.
Zeng, 48, was ordered to wait 14 more days.
“I have three kids, in college, middle school and elementary school. “The pressure is huge,” he said in a phone interview. Much of his $30 daily wage had supported them. “I also owe money to the bank, so I’m very anxious.”
As China battles its worst coronavirus outbreaks, its determination to eliminate infections has left millions unable to work. Stringent lockdowns have forced factories and businesses to shut, including in some of the country’s most important economic centers. Only Hong Kong and Beijing have started to ease restrictions.
Two groups have been especially hard-hit: migrant workers — the roughly 280 million laborers who travel from rural areas to cities to work in sectors such as manufacturing and construction — and college graduates. Nearly 11 million college students are expected to graduate this year.
China’s campaign against the virus has rippled around the world, snarling supply chains and dampening imports.
But employment woes may concern Chinese leaders, who have long derived much of their political authority from their promise of economic prosperity. As lockdowns have hampered people’s ability to pay rent and buy food, many have grown increasingly frustrated with the authorities’ zero-COVID policies. Sometimes, dissatisfaction has erupted into rare public protests.
China’s No. 2 official, Li Keqiang, announced recently that the government would distribute living allowances to unemployed migrant workers and subsidize companies that hired young people.
It is difficult to judge the scale of the problem. Officially, urban unemployment, the government’s primary indicator, grew 0.3% between February and March, even as lockdowns paralyzed the economic engines of Shenzhen and Shanghai.
But the official jobless figures are considered an undercount. They do not capture many migrant workers, and only count people as unemployed if they are able to start working within two weeks. That would exclude people under extended lockdowns or young people deferring job searches.
The government’s new support measures suggest the problem is more serious than officials have let on, said Stephen Roach, the former chair of Morgan Stanley Asia, now a senior fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University.
“The announcement itself is a hint that there is potentially something a lot bigger going on in this contingent piece of the labor market,” he said.