CHINA / Foreign Media on China
Jobs unfilled; economy surges
By GEOFFREY YORK (The Globe and Mail)
Updated: 2006-08-29 10:01
It's one of the strangest paradoxes of modern China: a booming economy
and an emerging scarcity of labour in key industries, even as millions of
ordinary Chinese suffer from a sharp rise in unemployment.
Those two contradictory trends could jeopardize China's economic miracle
if they are neglected by the Communist government, a new report by the
International Labour Organization warned Monday.
With the outside world still in awe of its economic growth, China's poor
record in job creation has gone relatively unnoticed. But the ILO report
is calling on China to focus on creating more jobs and better jobs for
the flood of new entrants to its labour force, who number more than four
million annually.
From 2000 to 2004, China's economy grew by a stunning 51 per cent. Yet in
the same period, there was only a modest 5-per-cent rise in the number of
jobs, the ILO report noted. And the official unemployment rate increased
to 4.2 per cent, compared with 3.1 per cent in 2000 and just 2.5 per cent
in 1990.
"China has seen a tremendous slowdown in the number of jobs being
created, compared to GDP growth," the report said.
"Given the steady increase in unemployment, job creation needs to be
placed at the forefront of the policy debate.��
Some Chinese experts have gone far beyond the ILO in their warnings of
future unemployment problems. Government researchers have estimated that
the true unemployment rate in Chinese cities is around 7 to 8 per cent
because many of the jobless are not officially registered.
With an estimated 150 million surplus workers still on the farms and
villages of the Chinese countryside, analysts have suggested that China
needs to create 25 million new jobs a year to absorb rural migrants and
school graduates over the next several years.
According to the ILO report, China's mediocre rate of job creation is a
result of two main factors: the shedding of jobs at poorly performing
state-owned enterprises, which have eliminated 30 million jobs in recent
years; and the long-term structural shift from employment-intensive
growth to capital-intensive growth as the country modernizes.
Labour productivity has surged by 40 per cent in the past five years, the
ILO report said. "Yet the growing number and share of unemployed in the
country underscores the need for greater efforts toward achieving the
goal of decent and productive job creation," it said.
"Expanding access to decent work will go a long way toward spreading the
benefits of the country's tremendous growth across the country's massive
population."
At the same time, the rising unemployment rate is co-existing uneasily
with a rising shortage of labour and soaring labour costs in many sectors
of the economy.
There is an estimated shortfall of two million workers, for example, in
the southern province of Guangdong, one of the primary centres of
manufacturing in China.
Nationally, there is a shortage of about 750,000 trained managers,
according to recent studies. And in industries such as construction and
machine building in the booming coastal provinces, employers are willing
to offer wages of 1,000 yuan (about $139) a month to their workers, a
sharp rise from 600 yuan a month just three years ago.
The ILO is urging China to bolster its education and training systems to
reduce the scarcity of skilled workers and technicians. "While shortages
of cheap labour threaten the dominance of China's powerhouse
manufacturing industries, the lack of qualified graduates could derail
longer-term plans for a transition to producing higher-value goods and
services," the report said. "This talent crunch is now hurting both
multinational companies and local firms."
Most Commented/Read Stories in 48 Hours
Today's Top News
� RMB gains before US Treasury Secretary's visit
� More peacekeepers head to Lebanon
� 75th anniversary of invasion marked
� Man rejects first penis transplant
� Female space tourist blasts off
Top China News
� PBOC: 'Significant progress' made in currency reforms
� China, US agree to further strengthen bilateral ties
� IMF agrees to increase China's voting power
� China blasts US accusation on religious freedom
� China to better help LDSs out of poverty
Alibaba is the largest B2B marketplace in the world. Source model ship,
wooden puzzle, one-piece toilet, RC hovercraft, photo album, prom dress,
pocket bike, Vaginal Speculum, Samurai Sword, String Panty and PVC Pipe.
Learn Chinese, Chinesepod
No comments:
Post a Comment