CHINA
China – The younger generation of Chinese are not as bothered by unemployment as their parents once were, according to an article in the New Zealand Herald.
Interviewing a 19-year-old factory worker, Chen Qinghai, he said would not apply to companies that are employing staff to work on assembly lines which are manufacturing photocopiers, DVD drives, mobile phones or car parts. "I wouldn't want to do any of these jobs. The pay is too low, and there's no chance of advancement. You'd just be stuck there."
"It's true that we're less willing to eat bitterness," Chen admitted, loosely translated from a popular Chinese phrase for enduring hardship. "We're better educated. We know we have rights. Times have changed."
Many factory bosses in southern China's Pearl River Delta, the nation's biggest manufacturing base, are facing a severe lack of workers because of such a shift in the young workers’ attitudes. The expectations of this particular workforce born in the 1980s and 1990s, are not similar to those of the earlier generation’s workforce. Younger workers who grew up with greater prosperity in families limited by the one-child policy expect less hardship in jobs, better working conditions and jobs prospects.
Employers are particularly anxious at this time of year, as they are facing seasonal lack of employment from the migrant workers who did not return to their jobs after a long holiday in their home provinces during the Lunar New Year. Farm-friendly policies are also keeping many people from working at the once popular coastal regions, while other migrants are finding jobs closer to home as the quality of living improved in the poorer interior provinces.
In addition, workers have also flocked to work for the infrastructure projects funded by China's massive economic stimulus package.
Although the Chinese officials have been denying the serious shortage of labour, they admit that small and medium-size enterprises are indeed facing difficulties in recruitment. They are currently requesting those enterprises to provide a good work environment for their workers so as to meet the rising expectations of the younger workforce.
Workers’ wages have also been raised by 10% recently in the Pearl River Delta, according to a survey by Stephen Green and Kelvin Lau, economists at Standard Chartered.
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