About 60 percent of labor-intensive companies currently have a significant portion of older workers on staff, according to a recent report by zhaopin.com, an online recruiting platform.
Among those surveyed, the report found most companies have a relatively large share of employees aged 50 and over, reported Shanghai-based news portal yicai.com.
Writing for the portal, Zhang Zheng, a scholar from the Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, examined the phenomenon.
While such work rarely requires advanced skillsets, a labor-intensive company with a high proportion of young workers will still outperform those with a lower proportion, he said.
If a set of businesses or industries employ young workers, there must be another set of businesses or industries to absorb workers aged between 40 and 60 to maintain low unemployment rates, he explained.
The reason China had a younger work force across almost every industries 20 years ago was an oversupply of labor.
But things are different now. First, the country’s total number of employment decreased from 776.4 million at the end of 2017 to 775.86 million a year later, the first such decrease since 1961. In addition, migrant workers are aging. Statistics show that between 2013 and 2016, migrant workers aged 50 and over increased by 13.21 million, which was larger than the increase in the total number of its migrant workers over the same period.
Instead, Zhang said this shows that China’s labor market is moving increasingly closer to achieving equilibrium of supply and demand and full employment.
The aging labor force could lower productivity for labor-intensive businesses. But if such businesses are poorly managed and unable to meet the expectations of more productive workers in terms of wages, work environment and prospects, they will put out of business eventually, he warned.
Old Version
