Workers are hard to find, despite official optimism
There is, officially, no labour shortage in Guangdong, but provincial newspapers have reported on the difficulty of hiring migrant workers and recruiters have searched inland for workers instead of waiting for their return after the Lunar New Year holiday.
State media quoted officials as saying 80 per cent of workers who went back to their home towns for Lunar New Year had returned to work, but a government source said only 50 per cent had returned by the end of last week.
'We don't have full figures yet. If they intend to return, they'll be back by February 18,' he said.
Nanhai's human resources bureau said it needed to fill 70,000 vacancies, including 40,000 in the manufacturing sector, and was offering salaries of 2,500 to 3,000 yuan a month for skilled workers, state media reported.
A recruitment team representing 13 companies from Huizhou's Boluo county had offered 5,000 jobs during a five-day visit to Guangxi, but only employed 500 workers on its first day.
Meanwhile, 1,200 factories in Dongguan had advertised 13,000 jobs online, but they were still waiting to fill 10,000 vacancies on Tuesday.
Liu Kaiming, executive director of the Shenzhen-based Institute of Contemporary Observation, said a poll of four Japanese-managed factories in Shanghai that paid workers at least 1,000 yuan a month found labour shortages of 10 per cent to 15 per cent.
'In Fujian, many factories are having difficulties hiring people. Guangdong's situation is no better. I predict Guangdong factories are suffering from a labour shortage of at least 10 per cent.'
He said the government was unwilling to admit the shortage because it was tantamount to admitting wages and benefits were poor.
'Once you admit it, people won't come,' he said.
Mr Liu said Guangdong's problem was even more serious than Shanghai's, because most of its workers were migrants.
