China’s vast workforce of migrant labourers is shrinking and getting older, mirroring a broader trend that is raising fears about a demographic crisis in the world’s second largest economy. For the first time since 2008, the number of migrant workers in China fell last year, dropping 5.17 million from 2019 to 285 million, according to survey data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The fall was largely attributed to the coronavirus pandemic, which severely disrupted the economy early in 2020, forcing many workers to stay in their rural hometowns because of transport restrictions. The construction, hotel and restaurant sectors lost the most migrant workers, parts of the economy that were particularly hard-hit early in the pandemic, the data released on Friday showed. The number of workers employed in manufacturing also declined, but that was in line with a trend that has seen more people leave jobs in factories to take up positions in the service sector in recent years, and has helped keep overall unemployment stable. Geoffrey Crothall, communications director at Hong Kong-based rights group the China Labour Bulletin, said the pandemic could not explain the whole phenomenon. “The rate of migrant worker population growth has levelled off in recent years, largely because fewer younger migrants are entering the workforce, and the migrant worker population is ageing steadily,” he said. Last year, the average age of a Chinese migrant worker increased by 0.6 years from 2019 to 41.4, compared to 34 years old in 2008, according to the NBS. Workers aged 16 to 30 accounted for 22.7 per cent of the total migrant labour workforce last year, down from 25.1 per cent in 2019. A decade ago, about 42 per cent of migrant workers fell into that age category. The proportion of migrant workers over the age of 50 more than doubled to 26.4 per cent in 2020 from a decade earlier, according to the NBS. Right throughout China’s economy, the working age population is rapidly greying. That has led to fears of a pension crisis that prompted Beijing to announce it will delay the retirement age to combat the associated economic effects. The NBS was expected to publish the results of the once-a-decade census by the end of April, but the official release has not been confirmed as data is still being processed. Regional statistics have already shown births are steadily falling and nationally the population is expected to peak within several years. Last year, migrant workers’ monthly wages increased only marginally by 2.8 per cent from a year earlier to 4,072 yuan (US$628), NBS data showed. The growth was minimal after accounting for 2.5 per cent inflation, showing the pressure the pandemic has put on low-income groups. The geographic spread of China’s migrant workers also changed last year, with more people taking jobs in central and western China, and fewer heading to prosperous eastern provinces. Crothall said this was likely to be because they were living and working closer to home. The number of people who left their hometowns to work grew 42 per cent in the first quarter from a year earlier, as the economy recovered from a historic contraction between January and March in 2020. Their monthly incomes grew 13.9 per cent year on year to 4,190 yuan in the first quarter. “I would expect to see a bit of a rebound in total numbers next year, but given overall demographic trends it will not be too much,” Crothall said.