China population: Shanghai’s populace falls again as migrant workers, births continue worrisome declines

With nearly 25 million people, Shanghai is China’s most densely packed urban metropolis, and the city’s population decline predates the nation’s by years

An exodus of jobseekers from other regions, an inability to convince couples to have children, an ageing population and zero-Covid measures took a toll on Shanghai last year

2-MIN READ2-MIN

Shanghai lost 257,000 migrant workers in 2022 as the megacity endured two months of lockdowns to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 8:00am, 29 Mar 2023Updated: 9:46am, 29 Mar 2023

China’s most densely packed urban metropolis lost a quarter million migrant workers last year amid its disruptive coronavirus-induced lockdowns, resulting in Shanghai’s total population falling for the third time since 2015, local authorities said on Tuesday.

The economic hub had around 24.76 million people last year, down by 135,400 compared with 2021, according to figures issued by the municipal bureau of statistics.

While the number of local residents slightly increased, the population decline was affected by the exodus of jobseekers from other regions, along with a low birth rate and an increasingly ageing population, the bureau said.

People aged 65 and above accounted for 18.7 per cent of Shanghai’s total population, well above the national average of 14.9 per cent.

The megacity, which went through a traumatic two-month citywide lockdown last spring, has been watching its number of migrant workers decline in recent years, since before the pandemic.

In 2015, Shanghai’s population decreased for the first time in four decades due to a loss of 150,000 migrant workers. Demographers and analysts mainly attributed this to structural changes in the city’s economy as its labour-intensive manufacturing sector shrank while other sectors such as hi-tech and services grew.

That population decline also came seven years before China’s overall population started falling last year, according to official figures. In the years between, the city saw moderate fluctuations, with the population ranging between 24.5 million and 24.9 million.