2009: the year of the labor shortage

via WikipediaStories of a growing shortage on labor has been popping up since almost half a decade, starting in Guangdong and then spreading north. The shortage might now become a nationwide feature in 2009, reports the Korean Chosun, quoting different sources.

A survey by the Labor Security Administration of Guangdong Province in the cities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Huizhou revealed that the province lacks 2 million laborers, the report said. Hubei and Zhejiang provinces are reportedly short of 400,000 and 860,000 workers respectively.
The report said the labor shortage is partly explained by the development of rural areas, decrease in the wage gap between urban and rural laborers, reduction in the absolute number of rural migrant workers, and lack of advanced labor force resulting from industrial restructuring.

It is one of the underlying reasons explaining why the position of workers in China is improving: there are just no longer enough of them.