Bloomberg Businessweek: Layoffs Loom in China as Growth Slows
IEMS Director Albert Park was interviewed by Bloomberg Businessweek on China’s overall labor employment situation as the country’s growth rate begins to flag.
As quoted in the article:
Layoffs have been particularly high among export-oriented manufacturers in southern China’s Pearl River Delta. A survey last August of 570 companies in Guangdong by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Beijing’s Tsinghua University showed companies had reduced their workforces by an average of 3.5 percent from 2013 to 2014, while low-skilled workers had been cut by 5 percent, says Albert Park, director of the HKUST’s Institute for Emerging Market Studies. Monthly wages for workers grew more than 10 percent annually in 2013 and 2014. They grew less than 2 percent through the first half of last year.
Even as the service industry grows, it’s failing to create many higher-end, better-paid jobs, like those in finance. Instead, says Park, it’s generating positions such as waiters, cooks, and dishwashers in restaurants.
Read the full article here: Bloomberg Businessweek published on 15 January 2016.
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Layoffs have been particularly high among export-oriented manufacturers in southern China’s Pearl River Delta. A survey last August of 570 companies in Guangdong by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Beijing’s Tsinghua University showed companies had reduced their workforces by an average of 3.5 percent from 2013 to 2014, while low-skilled workers had been cut by 5 percent, says Albert Park, director of the HKUST’s Institute for Emerging Market Studies. Monthly wages for workers grew more than 10 percent annually in 2013 and 2014. They grew less than 2 percent through the first half of last year. Even as the service industry grows, it’s failing to create many higher-end, better-paid jobs, like those in finance. Instead, says Park, it’s generating positions such as waiters, cooks, and dishwashers in restaurants.
Albert Francis Park
