Labor market booms in China's manufacturing hub

GUANGZHOU - Hucais, a printing company in South China's Guangdong province, is trying every means possible to find new workers.

"Recruitment in the first quarter of the year is never easy due to the Spring Festival vacation and we really need 15 percent more staff," said Hucais Executive Sun Jinlong.

It is a busy time, as delivery on orders that came in between January and March is scheduled for as late as August. The company rewards workers who introduce new staff and tries to prevent the loss of senior staff through training and benefits.

Hucais is among many companies in Guangdong fighting for job seekers as orders flood in.

Guangzhou companies are recruiting more staff than this time last year and many have found themselves with no choice but to raise salaries. The demand for migrant workers is also on the rise.

Shenzhen Talent claims that more than 80 percent of Shenzhen companies have hired more new staff since the Spring Festival holiday than they did last year.

In Humen Township, electronics manufacturers are in dire need of workers, according to Deng Zhiqiang, deputy head of the township's human resources bureau.

"Following the vacation, 92 percent of our workers have returned, but that is far from enough," said Cai Zongming, general manager of Dongguan C.C.P. Contact Probes Co Ltd, a cell phone component maker that supplies Apple and Huawei. "We are handing out leaflets on the streets to attract workers."

Recruitment personnel in some companies have traveled to central and western areas, such as Yunnan province, to find workers, Deng said.

Employers are offering accident and critical insurance in addition to the five types of insurance required by the government, Deng said.

Humen, a district of Dongguan, a production base for garments and cables, had 88,000 market entities in 2017, up 16.3 percent. Last year, industrial electricity consumption grew by 10.8 percent. The number of high-tech companies rose from 76 to 170.

As manufacturers upgrade production lines, they need more skilled workers. At a job fair in late March, Dongguan companies made offers to 58,000 college students who will graduate this summer and, for the first time in Guangdong, the number of college graduates who found new jobs exceeded the number who received only secondary education.

"We ignored this fair in the past because it was full of migrant workers, but we came here this year since we are desperate to find some experienced, skilled applicants," said Yu Haibao, recruitment manager of Juhai Soft, a Guangzhou high-tech company.