China’s migrants return to farm, drastically changing workforce dynamics
For the first time in decades, the share of China’s workforce employed in raw materials industries has gone up – a consequence of a weak job market and a return of rural migrants to their homes.
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- Proportion, total number of workers involved in primary industries went up in 2022 for the first time in 20 years, according to new released data
- Depressed urban job market, pandemic controls prompted rural migrants to return to hometowns, altering labour share
About 176.6 million people – 24.1 per cent of the nation’s total employed – were engaged in agriculture, fishing, forestry, mining and other activities involving the extraction of natural resources in 2022, according to the 2023 China Population and Employment Statistical Yearbook. The data compendium was recently published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The same numbers stood at 170.7 million and 22.9 per cent in 2021.
The number of employed people in the sector started to fall in 2003, and their proportion has been in steady decline since 1999.
Experts said the rise may reflect a return of migrant workers to their rural hometowns amid strict pandemic controls and a bleak urban job market in 2022, and it may continue if other sectors do not compensate with a return to sustained growth.
“It [shows] urban services sectors, as well as small and medium enterprises, both major job creators, have shrunk gravely,” said Wang Dan, chief economist at Hang Seng Bank China.
Since the dawn of the century, China’s rapid urbanisation has brought in millions of migrant workers from rural areas to seek job opportunities, who have in turn powered the development of urban regions.
In 2022, China had 295.62 million migrant workers, 3.11 million more than the previous year according to NBS data.
However, they are also the most vulnerable group in the Chinese job market, and are largely overlooked by the country’s unemployment metrics.
The surveyed urban unemployment rate in China has stabilised at around 5 per cent in recent months, but it does not include former rural migrants who have returned to the countryside after losing or quitting their jobs in cities and towns.
Youth unemployment figures were also high until the government stopped releasing age breakdowns in July, when more than one out of every five people aged 16 to 24 were reported as unemployed.
The rise in returns to the farm comes as China’s working-age population is on the wane. Defined as those between the ages of 15 and 64, that demographic has dropped from its peak of 997 million in 2014 to 875.56 million in 2021.
According to the yearbook, those employed in secondary industries – generally understood to be synonymous with manufacturing – accounted for 28.8 per cent of the total employed workforce, while the tertiary sector, services, represented 47.1 per cent. Respectively, the figures for both in 2021 were 29.1 per cent and 48 per cent.
