China is Short of Technical Workers

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, September 16, 2002

China is Short of Technical Workers

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The lack of new technical workers in labor market now has led to imbalance in employment structure. The needs for skilled technicians are just like need for cheese. Not only the domestic market is gazing at cheese and foreigners are eyeing at it too.

According to Japanese media, Japanese related department is pondering over a plan to set up "Sino-Japan Technicians Exchange Center" in order to support its middle-and-elder technicians washed out by Japanese enterprises to find work to do in China.

Another news told that blue collar workers now become a "popular cake" in labor market, students in a Beijing's technical school have already found jobs even before graduation. And in Shenzhen's labor market, a postgraduate's salary is 800 yuan lower than that of a senior bench worker.

All these things are related to employment. Industry reform caused a lot of laid-off workers, and surplus workforces in rural areas want to find new jobs in cities. It seems that another problem should also be taken into account, namely a much fiercer competition in the world market.

China faces two problems in labor market. On one hand, large quantity of laid-off workers and rural surplus could not find new jobs while on the other, market is in short of technical workers who are not only favored by domestic market, but also by foreigners.

As economy is going to be globalized, capital is certain to be re-structured, which will cause international division of work to be re-grouped and it will be followed with the re-structure in employment. After China's accession to the WTO, China's labor market will face challenges from other countries.

Generally speaking, job displacement usually follows where the capital goes. We deem for a long time that with the diversion of labor intensified in developed countries, it will be sure to bring more job opportunities to China, but we've neglected another aspect, that is workforce will also shift alongside with the capital and jobs directions. For example, a senior Japanese laid-off technician is quite likely to find a new job in China.

Of course, there are some exceptions. But we have to take those factors into consideration. The rare case may turn into a common phenomenon. One of the results of the economic globalization is that it causes workforce to flow round the world.

Related statistics show that the actual need for senior technicians is 12 percentage points higher than that of the current technicians at work.

Some local governments have realized that they should hold training classes for workers, for example, labor and security bureau of Beijing municipal government has launched a training plan for a period of three years and some universities are paying more attention to the all-round cultivation of students.

What should be tipped off is that all these training plans should be combined together with the re-employment plans.

In fact, many elder technicians have very plentiful experience and after a period of training, they can be turned out new era's blue-collar workers for work again.

By PD Online Staff Li Yan

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