To alleviate the "lack of labor" in the manufacturing industry requires comprehensive measures
【News Essay】
Recently, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security released a ranking of the 100 “most job shortages” in the country where recruitment is greater than job hunting in the first quarter of 2021.
The ranking shows that there is currently a large employment gap in manufacturing jobs. Among the 29 newly ranked occupations, 20 are directly related to manufacturing, accounting for 69.0%.
Among them, the demand for occupations related to automobile production and chip manufacturing has increased significantly. "Automobile production line operators" entered the top ten for the first time, "auto parts remanufacturers", "battery manufacturers", "printed circuit builders", and "semiconductors". "Chip Maker" and other occupations have newly entered the rankings.
In the short term, the lack of labor in the manufacturing industry confirms the current sustained and steady recovery of my country's economy.
In the first quarter of this year, the added value of the national industrial enterprises above designated size increased by 24.5% year-on-year and 2.01% month-on-month. The added value of the equipment manufacturing industry and high-tech manufacturing industry increased by 39.9% and 31.2% year-on-year respectively.
In terms of product output, the growth rate of new energy vehicles, industrial robots, excavating and shoveling transportation machinery, microcomputer equipment, and integrated circuits all exceeded 60% year-on-year.
The manufacturing purchasing managers' index in March was 51.9%, which was above the threshold for 13 consecutive months.
The improvement of economic prosperity has generated strong demand for employment in manufacturing-related jobs, and has become the "most lacking job" occupation for several consecutive quarters.
In the medium term, the lack of labor in the manufacturing industry also reflects some new changes in my country's industrial structure.
my country's industrialization process has entered the middle and late stages, with more refined division of labor, longer industrial chains, more circuitous production methods, and rapid increase in labor demand in the manufacturing industry, resulting in an increasingly shortage of professional and technical personnel.
At the same time, new economies and new business formats continue to emerge. Some post-90s and post-00s abandon the traditional way of earning a living by part-time work and choose to be anchors, open online stores, and do micro-businesses. This has produced labor supply for the manufacturing industry. The substitution effect has exacerbated the shortage of manufacturing personnel.
In the long run, the lack of labor in the manufacturing industry is also the inevitable result of the changes in the age structure of our population.
At present, the aging of our country's population continues to increase, and the total and proportion of working-age population is declining rapidly. In particular, the sharp decrease in the number of newly-growing rural labor forces has caused the number of young and middle-aged migrant workers who constitute the main employment force in the manufacturing industry to shrink.
In addition, manufacturing companies still adhere to the "wasteful" employment model of using only the youngest labor force, and abandon the 40 to 50-year-old labor force, further exacerbating the imbalance between the supply and demand of manufacturing jobs.
From a deeper level, the lack of labor in the manufacturing industry also indicates that there is a more serious potential labor gap in the producer service industry. Therefore, the lack of labor in the manufacturing industry also requires the service industry to make efforts.
With the evolution of industrialization to high-level processing, the manufacturing industry chain has been extended, and the degree of integration with the service industry has deepened. Under more complex and circuitous production methods, more pre-, mid-, and post-production supporting service positions have moved from the manufacturing industry. China is outsourced and completed in a stricter division of labor, which creates a large amount of labor demand for the service industry, especially the producer service industry.
On the other hand, the development of the producer service industry will in turn promote the expansion of employment demand in the manufacturing industry, making the lack of engineering of the two show a trend of overlapping with each other.
Solving the problem of lack of labor in the manufacturing industry requires the concerted efforts of enterprises, workers and functional departments.
Enterprises should change their thinking about employment.
In the recruitment process, age cannot simply be used to describe heroes. For jobs in the manufacturing and productive service industries that are dominated by manual labor, age is indeed an important condition, but it should not become an absolute threshold for hiring.
In fact, older workers have a richer life experience and a stronger sense of responsibility. Although the speed of accepting new knowledge and mastering new technologies may be slower than that of young people, they have mastered the essentials of work and adapted to work through training. After the environment, the loyalty to the company is higher, which is more conducive to the company to maintain a stable workforce.
On the whole, older workers may not make less contribution to the enterprise than younger workers.
Functional departments cannot be absent.
Looking at the developed countries in the world today, in the process of economic take-off, extending compulsory education and popularizing higher education are a common trend.
At present, the average length of education for the labor force in my country is only 10.8 years, and the average length of education for the newly added labor force is only 13.8 years. A considerable part of the labor force has only a junior high school education level, and the vast majority of the labor force has no higher education.
It is hard to imagine that the upgrading of China's manufacturing structure in the middle and late stages of industrialization can be completed by hundreds of millions of middle school graduates. It is urgent to extend the length of compulsory education and increase investment in general higher education and higher vocational education.
On the other hand, the human resources department should provide sufficient on-the-job training opportunities for workers who have already embarked on a job.
For some companies that are worried about employees leaving after training and training costs will be overwhelming, government departments can use training subsidies to encourage companies to provide training and correct the externalities of training.
In particular, for the "most lack of jobs" positions such as the manufacturing industry and related producer services, the government should introduce a preferential training support plan, focusing on the employment needs of the manufacturing industry and the producer service industry, and accurately carry out vocational skills training. Improve professional qualification certification and evaluation standards, and expand the career development space of job seekers.
(Author: Zou Yinan, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Central Party School [National School of Administration])