5.9% of Rural Labor Force Shifted to Secondary, Tertiary Industries in China Last YearLatest sources from the State Statistics Bureau show that 6.4 percent of labor force in rural China had shifted to the country's secondary and tertiary industries in 1999. With 0.5 percent of its rural labor force having made a change of their life from non-agricultural to agricultural labor, the net shifting amount of rural labor force was placed at 5.9 percent of the rural total, up 0.4 percent over the same period of 1998.Authoritative Investigations into 180.000 laborers from 60,000 farmers' households in more than 800 counties, 30 provinces, autonomous regions and cities already point to an accelerated speed of rural labor force that had moved out of the primary into the secondary and tertiary industries in China in 1999. A faster speed of this has even been seen in Shanghai, Anhui, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hubei, Sichuan, Chongqing and Gansu. The shifting sees the characteristics as follows: Shifting labor force, as things stood in those areas said above in China in 1999, had experienced a big rise in proportion on a provincial, regional or municipal scale. In 1999, 79 percent of surplus labor force had become locally employed in the secondary and tertiary industries in the country, up 11 percentage points over 1998. East China remains the hot destination for a shift of rural labor force in China. Meanwhile, more people began to divert their focus on west China. Among the laborers of surplus rural labor leaving their native place to seek employment in other provinces, autonomous regions and cities in 1999, 79.8 percent headed for east China, down 2.5 percentage points when compared with the same period of 1998. Sixty percent of laborers came from central China. Ten percent chose central China for employment, up 0.6 percentage points. More than 10.2 percent went to the country's west, up 1.9 percentage points over 1998. Small towns had attracted more labor than before, seeing 14.9 percent of surplus labor that had moved to become jobbers in towns, up 5.3 percent over 1998. Most of the said laborers are young or people in their prime years of life. The number of people at an age 18-40 takes 77.3 percent. Of these, 57.9 percent are at an age between 18 and 30. |
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