From the "If You Pay Peanuts, All You Can Hire are Monkeys" department:
BEIJING -- Two of China's main export manufacturing areas are suffering from an acute shortage of migrant workers, giving laborers more leverage over wages and curtailing the expansion plans of some companies. The article cited experts saying that rising living costs along the coast coupled with low wages had led to an increasing number of workers deciding to stay in the interior of China, where living costs are much lower.
And from the Thesaurus of Economic Excuses
The labor shortage in the Pearl River Delta is coming during the busiest time of the year for factories there, when Western companies order more goods for their holiday season.
Seems a bit late for holiday manufacturing to gear up. |