It is tough to hire people after the festival in many cities nationwide such as Guangzhou, Wuhan, and Beijing.

It has been commonly seen that labor shortage happens after Chinese New Year Festival for a couple years. There is no exception this year.

According to a survey from Guangzhou Human Resources Service Center, there is an employment gap of 123.33 thousand people after Chinese New Year Festival this year in Guangzhou. Wuhan Human Resources Center estimates that the employment gap is 90-110 thousand people this year with the increase of 10-20 thousand people.

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Deputy Director of the Institute of Population and Labor Economics at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Che Wei Zhang, told reporter that some companies have had equipments and materials ready but could not hire one employee. Those companies have to put those investments of equipments and materials away and to wait for workers to work. This actually has influenced the development of the companies.

To deal with the issue of labor shortage, many companies will move the recruiting location forward to train stations, bus stations and labor service centers in order to grab employees. Not a few companies increase compensation, and also some other companies encourage senior workers to bring new workers to the companies or factories. The senior workers can get the bonus of money up to 1000 Yuan after bringing one new worker.

There are two main reasons of labor shortage according to Zhang. One reason is labor supply and demand relationship has already fundamentally changed. The other reason is the instability of labor relationship due to short-term contract makes recruitment harder. Meanwhile, the instability of labor relationship also makes a lot of rural migrant workers in cities difficult to blend into big cities. Those migrant workers need to transfer from work cities to rural homes as migrant birds.

To resolve the issue of labor Shortage, Zhang points out that the society needs a stable labor relationship, a thorough security system, and an increased public service level. Rural migrant workers want to enjoy the same public services as city residents and a long-term development opportunity in companies as well as in cities.