Guangdong, the largest export province in the mainland, is expected to face a shortage of one million low-skilled workers this year.
About 70 per cent of enterprises in the Pearl River Delta said they had difficulty hiring labour, the Guangdong statistics bureau said.
'Rapid economic growth and increasing exports lead to corporate expansion ... The increase of labour in the region cannot catch up with the growing number of enterprises,' it said in an article on the website of the National Bureau of Statistics of China.
Low salaries and poor welfare also would drive workers away from repetitive factory jobs, the bureau said. An average worker earns about 1,000 yuan a month.
The bureau interviewed 329 enterprises in the Pearl River Delta at the end of last year, with responses indicating the structural labour shortage 'will go on for a while', especially in cities such as Dongguan, Shenzhen and Guangzhou.
Tony Wu, an executive director of toymaker Smart Union Group, said salaries had increased by more than 10 per cent this year in a bid to lure labour. The company had failed to fill 20 per cent of vacancies during the peak season between May and October at its production plant in Dongguan.