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China’s Unemployment Swells as Exports Falter
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Feb 05, 2009 09:49pm |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - New York Times |
| News Date | Friday, February 6, 2009 03:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: February 5, 2009
GUANGZHOU, China — Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers are returning here earlier than usual from their home villages after the Chinese New Year holiday. Lugging their belongings in plastic sacks and cardboard boxes, they are hoping to find increasingly scarce jobs. Many will fail.
Liu Yijiang, a 21-year-old worker from Guangxi Province, stopped his bicycle in front of a factory’s gate and explained that he had been unable to find work since he was laid off late last year by a ceiling lamp factory and went home to his village.
“I came back early to see if I can find a job,” he said. “A lot of my friends are out of work.”
A spokeswoman for the Guangdong Provincial Labor and Social Security Bureau said Thursday that 3 million of an expected 9.7 million migrant workers had returned to the province by Wednesday evening. Many have jobs waiting for them, but two million have no employment lined up and must look for work, she said.
Beijing authorities disclosed Monday that based on an agriculture ministry survey of villages just before the Chinese New Year holiday last week, about 20 million of the nation’s 130 million migrant workers are unemployed.
In the factory city of Dongguan, adjacent to Guangzhou, many plants have deferred reopening for up to three weeks for lack of orders from the United States and Europe, said Eddie Leung, the chairman of the Dongguan Association of Foreign Invested Enterprises.
At Fortunique, a manufacturer of hospital gowns and other protective wear on the southern outskirts of Guangzhou, about 50 men and women showed up early Thursday morning looking in vain for jobs. More came to the gate through the day.
“I haven’t seen that since the early 1990s,” when China’s economic boom was still in its early stages, said Charles Hubbs, the company’s owner. |
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