Increase in young laborers from out of town
Native Shanghai laborers aged between 16 and 35 have been decreasing while those from outside the city have been increasing, according to a report by the city’s human resources and social security authority and the youth league.
The report is based on employment statistics with the human resources authority since 2013 and a special survey of sampled employees.
It says there are about 1.79 million young employees with local residency registered in the city, down 7.2 percent from last year and 22.1 percent from 2013.
The report attributes the decease mainly to the increasing aging population. Meanwhile, more and more young Shanghainese are going abroad to study and work, reducing their participation in the local labor market.
The number of registered young employees from outside Shanghai is about 3.15 million, up 2.3 percent from last year and 25.2 percent from 2013.
Anhui Province is the largest source of non-native young laborers as it contributed 663,000 employees aged between 16 and 35, up 1.2 percent from last year and 14.6 percent from 2013.
There are around 1.32 million young employees from the Yangtze River Delta region, or 41.9 percent of the non-native young laborers. That’s a 1.7 percent increase from last year and 21.9 percent from 2013.
The report says that with integration in the region, more of its laborers will come to Shanghai for work.
The 4.94 million native and non-native young employees account for 48.7 percent of the total registered employees in the city.
Nearly 60 percent have degrees from junior colleges, a 4.3 percent increase from last year and 38.4 percent from 2013.
Some 377,000 have postgraduate degrees, a 13.8 percent growth from last year and 89.4 percent increase from 2013.
About 3.98 million of the young employees, or 81 percent of the total, work in the service sector, up 0.4 percent from last year and 14.9 percent from 2013.
Those working in the secondary industry reported a 8.2 percent decrease from last year and down 28.2 percent from 2013.
The report says the changes come with Shanghai’s upgrading industry structure and technological development.
The young employees’ average pay was 7,342 yuan (US$1,067) a month last year, up 11.3 percent from previous year. The average annual growth since 2013 is 11.6 percent.
It’s slightly lower than the average income of all employees in Shanghai, which was 7,832 yuan a month last year, but its growth is faster than the city average, which was 9.2 percent last year.
Authorities also found that 92.6 percent of the polled employees said they were “very satisfied” or “relatively satisfied” with their current jobs, a 1.7 percentage points increase from last year. About 1.8 percent said they were “not quite satisfied” or “very dissatisfied,” 0.4 percentage points down from last year.