China's Guangdong province, one of the main engines of growth in the world's seventh largest economy, will be short of one million migrant labourers this year, state media said, citing a government survey. More than a quarter of Guangdong's population of 110 million people are migrants.
Most come from rural areas in less well-off interior provinces, such as Sichuan and Hunan. Farm incomes, however, have been rising while wages in the region have been flat for years, prompting migrant workers to seek employment elsewhere.
A sample survey on migrant workers in the province's Pearl River Delta, conducted by the provincial statistics bureau, showed that the labour shortage had been getting worse since it first appeared in 2004, the Xinhua news agency reported. Since the first half of last year, 72.9 percent of companies questioned had difficulties recruiting workers, it said.
"If a company can provide a monthly salary of 1,000 yuan or above, it will not have difficulty in recruiting workers," the report quoted Fang Chaogui, director of the provincial labour and social security department, as saying.
The average monthly salary for a migrant worker in Guangdong is 500-1,000 yuan ($60-$120), it said.
The survey polled 329 of the 33,000 private firms or companies with capital from overseas, including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
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