Major labor export province draws people back with local opportunities

HEFEI, Feb. 12 (Xinhua) -- On an early morning shortly after the Spring Festival holiday, nearly 100 local enterprises gathered at a public square of Fuyang City in east China's Anhui Province to recruit workers for the new year production.

"I saw the recruitment information on my community social media group. I want to find a job close to home because I have two kids to look after," said Liu Lei, 43, who used to work in electric welding in the coastal province of Zhejiang.

Fuyang, with a population of 10.8 million, is a major source of migrant workers. Roughly 3.8 million, or more than one-third of its population, are working across the country all year round.

However, like Liu, an increasing number of Fuyang residents are looking to work at their doorsteps mainly for two reasons. One, the local average income has increased gradually, although there is still a gap compared with more developed regions along the coast, and secondly, many middle-aged workers have to take care of their elderly parents and young children at home.

There are many job seekers who want to stay and work in the local area, said Wang Fang, from the human resource department at BYD, a leading car manufacturer in China. Four business divisions of the company attended the job fair, aiming to hire more than 1,000 workers for its new factory in Hefei, capital of Anhui.

Working near home has become a consensus shared by an increasing number of migrant workers. Some have decided to return to their hometowns to establish their own businesses after they have gained enough money and experience by working in other regions. In these newly-built factories, surplus rural laborers are absorbed, and the income of rural residents is also increased.

Fuyang has taken a series of measures to encourage and support local people to come back for work or entrepreneurship.

In 2020, an entrepreneurship park was launched in the city's economic development zone, providing low-cost operating sites and services for returnee entrepreneurs. The park is like an incubator that offers services such as legal, financial and human resources support, said Li Dandan, director of the park's operations.

A year later, Yu Liang, a 38-year-old Fuyang businessman, founded a clothing company and settled in the park, employing some 50 workers. The factory area has expanded from 3,000 square meters to 10,000 square meters, thanks to its business growth.

"It only takes about 20 minutes to come from home to the factory by e-bike. I can make over 5,000 yuan (about 740 U.S. dollars) a month, just a little lower than in more developed areas. However, I can spend more time with my family," said Yang Ping, 43, a worker at the company. Several of her neighbors who worked outside Anhui before have also applied to work in the factory this year, Yang added.

Over the past 16 years, more than 63,500 individuals have returned to Fuyang and set up their own businesses, providing 482,000 jobs for the locals.

The returnee workers in Fuyang are indicative of a larger trend in Anhui. The number of Anhui rural migrant workers working inside the province increased from 8.4 million in 2013 to 11.7 million in 2021, data from the Department of Human Resources and Social Security of Anhui Province showed.

A similar situation is observed in the Baimao Township of Anqing City in Anhui Province, where a group of local companies is benefiting from the upsurge in people willing to work close to home.

Walking into the workshop of a local shoe company, dozens of automatic sewing machines can be seen running in full swing. Order volume has continued to soar since the Spring Festival this year, but the production pressure has been greatly eased with the help of returnee workers, said Wu Canwen, who works at the shoe company's administrative department.