EMPLOYMENT PRESSURE: University graduates wait at the site of a job fair held in Lanzhou, capital city of west China's Gansu Province on September 17. The fair offered 20,000 jobs for university graduates (XINHUA)

Recently, labor shortages have spread from east China's Pearl River and Yangtze River deltas to north China, where labor has typically been relatively abundant.

To examine this issue, it is necessary to examine changes in population structure in China. Statistics showed that the birthrate declined significantly after the 1990s, dropping from a peak of 25 million in 1990 to 15.8 million in 2009.

In accordance with China's employment system, new workers are between 18-22 years old. Therefore, some of those born after 1990 are entering or have entered the labor market. That is to say, the decline of the birthrate since 1990 has resulted in the current labor shortage. Its initial impact was initially felt as a marked decline in primary school students.

In China, children attend six years of primary school beginning at age six, and three years of middle school from age 12. Middle school students will be distributed across three sections after graduation: some of them go to high school; some go to secondary vocational, technical, or professional schools; and the remainder will immediately enter the labor market.

The number of graduating primary school students declined from 24.19 million in 2000 to 18.05 million in 2009, at a rate similar to that of the declining birthrate. This caused a similar reduction in the number of middle school students.

In 1986, the number of graduating middle school students was fairly low, standing at only 10.57 million due to then-poor economic conditions, incomplete education system and, obviously, the lack of basic educational facilities in rural areas.

But in 2004, that number reached 20.70 million, and decreased from 20.62 million in 2006 to 17.95 million in 2009. It is obvious that all figures, from the birthrate to numbers of primary and middle school students, have gradually declined and led to the gap in the labor market.

However, the emergence of manpower shortages in north China is by no means an individual phenomenon or a short-term case. It is actually in continuity with migrant worker shortages in east China's coastal cities since 2003, and is prevailing in more areas in the country.

China can be considered to have reached a turning point. That means wages for industrial workers will begin to rise quickly at this point when the supply of surplus labor from the countryside tapers off in the context of current economic development. Wages of migrant workers from rural areas will rise incrementally.

What is worth mentioning is that although the numbers of newborn babies, primary school students and middle school students have declined constantly in the last two decades, the number of senior high school students has increased.

Since 1999, China's colleges began to expand admissions. As a repercussion, the number of senior high school students increased as well. High school students numbered 2.24 million in 1986, and rocketed upwards from 2.63 million in 1999 to 8.24 million in 2009.

As a result, the number of students graduating from college sharply increased from 2.12 million in 2003 to more than 6 million in the last few years. The increasing number of college graduates caused employment difficulties, because social demand has not risen commensurately with the college graduate population.

As for secondary technical and vocational schools, the number of students had been rising since 1990, albeit at a slow rate, but the number began to decline after 2002 because many students who would have been preparing to go to secondary vocational and technical schools instead changed focus to prepare for university in response to expanded student admissions.

As the Chinese Government had increased investment in secondary vocational and technical schools, the number of students in vocational schools began to rise, but still came short of demand, especially for the country's manufacturing industry, which is hungry for workers and technicians.

As the number of college students grows fast, employment for university students cannot be resolved in the short-term. Considering that China is still a developing country, industry, especially manufacturing, will occupy a superior position for a very long time to come. Only a portion of students graduating from vocational and technical schools are qualified to meet the requirements for manufacturing posts.

Therefore, unbalanced supply and demand for labor power will become a more prominent problem, resulting in the coexistent shortage of migrant and technical workers and saturation of job-seeking college graduates.

As a result, enterprises should make preparations to efficiently cope with the labor shortage. Efforts should be made to strengthen workers' recruitment system, gradually increase workers' wages, and improve working conditions. The establishment of more harmonious labor relations will help enterprises meet the needs of the new labor market.

The author is vice-president of the School of Labor and Human Resources at Renmin University of China.

(Source: Xinhua)