Coronavirus: China’s huge migrant worker population bearing the brunt of economic shutdown

Migrant workers could lose a combined US$115 billion in wages as factories struggle to resume output and many services businesses remain closed

Nearly impossible for them to make up lost wages by working longer hours, analysts say, since earnings largely supplemented by commission

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Migrant workers arrive at Beijing West Railway Station in Beijing, on February 26, from a special train transporting 470 migrant workers from Chongqing to Beijing. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 12:00pm, 6 Mar 2020Updated: 12:03pm, 6 Mar 2020

Lily Zhu, a migrant worker from the southern province of Hunan, who works as a sales manager at a high-end Beijing restaurant, does not expect to be paid at all in February, March or April.

Her employer, like most restaurants in the Chinese capital, remains closed due to the coronavirus outbreak.

“I have been waiting for my employer to call me back to work in Beijing, but the latest notice was that payment of my basic salary for February had been ‘postponed’,” she said from her hometown. “My salary has stopped, but other payments cannot be stopped, like the mortgage for my flat in Hunan or rent on my flat in Beijing.”

Zhu made more than 10,000 yuan (US$1,437) a month last year, mainly in commissions on table bookings and special orders for wine and other house specials. But she now finds herself as one of the nearly 300 million migrant workers in China who are bearing the brunt of the economic fallout from the coronavirus epidemic.

They are employed in the services and manufacturing sectors, where their income is largely decided by how much they produce or how many hours they work.

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