Sichuan Faces Jobs Crisis
China's southwestern Sichuan province is facing a crippling jobs crisis, five months after a devastating earthquake killed more than 80,000 people and leveled entire cities. The situation has forced hundreds of thousands of people to leave home in search of jobs around the country.
In the most detailed public assessment yet of the post-quake economic situation, China's central government said more than 1.5 million people in Sichuan lost their jobs. In the areas hardest hit by the May 12 quake, more than 80% are unemployed.
The 7.9-magnitude temblor 'has brought tremendous shock to Sichuan's jobs situation,' China's Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said in a written response to questions from The Wall Street Journal.
The need to leave families behind to find work in distant cities is complicating the lives of victims who suffered the loss of family members and homes in the quake. For years, Sichuan has been one of the country's biggest sources of migrant workers for the nation's factories and service businesses. The quake significantly accelerated the outflow.
Many residents are desperate to save money to begin rebuilding their homes quickly to they might qualify for government assistance, they say. Thousands have left children behind with elderly relatives.
Sichuan's troubles likely will spill over to a larger national economy facing the prospect of slowdown because of the global financial crisis and dropping demand for Chinese exports in the U.S. and Europe.
Sichuan, China's fourth-largest province, is home to 81 million people, 6% of the country's population. More than a third live in urban areas. The province has become increasingly important to the national economy. Its provincial gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic output, was China's ninth-largest last year. It is unlikely to retain that economic heft this year.
Sichuan's economic troubles have a social dimension: Because many of the newly unemployed are former farmers, officials find themselves with a huge pool of untrained job-seekers in need of fresh skills. That prospect could strain the national budget. The central government said it plans to spend at least one trillion yuan ($146.1 billion) on relief and reconstruction work.
In Sichuan's urban centers, job prospects are equally dim. The urban jobless rate was 4.2% last year, according to the government. The rate has increased, although the human-resources ministry hasn't given a post-quake figure. It said the number of urban jobless in Sichuan has exceeded 700,000 and hundreds of thousands have left the area.
Tan Jianying's family is part of the outward march. After the quake brought down the second floor of their two-story home, Ms. Tan's parents moved to Beijing, where they found jobs as janitors in shopping malls. Three uncles and their wives also moved, one with a 3-year-old son in tow. During the Olympics, when construction projects were ordered to stop, her uncles camped out at work sites begging for odd jobs, said Ms. Tan, who herself works the afternoon shift at a French-style cafe in the national capital.
'Even if we had no jobs, we would remain in Beijing,' she said. 'What can we do back home?'
One of her aunts, Tan Yanju, has only raised pigs and has never left her village. But in July, determined to save money to rebuild her home, she secured work as a janitor at a mall in Beijing, working 13 hours a day. 'I'm not used to standing on my feet all day. There's so much to do,' she said one afternoon outside a women's bathroom she just mopped.
An official at Sichuan's labor bureau said he believes many of those who have left have found odd jobs or part-time work. But because such bit work is hard to track, he said, the bureau doesn't have migration figures.
Meanwhile, 20 of the country's more prosperous provinces and cities, including eastern Zhejiang and Beijing, have been enlisted in a program to help Sichuan residents find permanent work. The program includes offering start-up subsidies and short-term health care, officials said. At least 33,000 Sichuan residents have signed up, according to an official at the human-resources ministry.
The central government said it expects reconstruction work in Sichuan to continue to 2011. The effort will create jobs for the province and may lure back residents, said Constance Thomas, director of the China and Mongolia office for the United Nations' International Labor Organization. Still, the government will have to invest massively in training local residents if they are to benefit from any expected construction boom, Ms. Thomas said. 'Right now, we are most concerned there is a mismatch between those that are unemployed and those jobs that will be offered,' she said.
Jason Leow |
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终于看完了~~~现在哪里都是就业难啊~~敢问路在何方~~
