China's communists have to stop discriminating against the workers, The Wall Street Journal reported.
A migrant-worker tribe that swelled to 158 million in 2011 from 25 million in 1990 has been a key contributor to China's rapid growth. The move from the farm to the factory expanded the work force, increased productivity and supercharged China's export competitiveness.
The fear is that after decades of migration, the store of rural workers is close to exhausted. Wages increased 14.8% in the year to June, despite a sharp slowdown in the export and construction sectors where migrants work. That certainly suggests a dearth of workers.
But the reality is that policy, not population, is the main cause of the shortage. Xin Meng, an expert on China's labor market at Australian National University, calculates that most rural migrants spend only seven years away from the farm. They arrive in the city in their late teens and return to the country aged around 25 to raise children.
Of the 380 million-strong rural population aged 16 to 40, just 100 million are working in the cities.
To see why, look no further than discriminatory policies that deny rural migrants and their families access to the benefits of city life. Ms. Xin's survey work shows that in 2011, 13% of migrant workers had unemployment insurance and 20% had health coverage—compared with 66% and 87%, respectively, of urban residents. The destruction of schools for migrant children in Beijing in 2011 shows how welcome migrants' families are in China's major cities.
When the lower supply and higher expectations of migrant workers runs up against management intransigence on pay and conditions, the results can be explosive.
Riots at a Foxconn factory last month, for instance, may be symptomatic of a deeper malaise.
The good news is that with millions of working-age Chinese remaining in the countryside, the supply of labor is not exhausted. The bad news is that tempting the additional workers out of the villages will require higher wages, and far-reaching reforms of China's entrenched urban-residence system. Migrant workers built China's cities; now they have to be allowed to live in them. Read more. (Subscription required.)
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