Several of my clients recently asked me about the shortage of workers and the increases in salaries that most suppliers complain about. Basically, they wonder if this is a seasonal trend. My opinion is that it is a long-term tendency that importers should count on.

What drives these changes? The aspirations of the new generation of Chinese factory workers.

Here are a few excerpts from articles about this subject.

First, More Mobile, Less Content, by Leslie Chang (author of Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China):

The new generation came of age when migration was already an accepted path to a better life. Younger and better educated than their predecessors, they are motivated less by the poverty of the countryside than by the opportunity of the city.

They aspire to the urban lifestyle; a newly arrived migrant worker will often spend her first month’s pay on a mobile phone and a stylish haircut. These workers are discerning about jobs, shunning physical labor in favor of a position that teaches skills and offers promotions.

Second, an interesting article just published by Alexandra Harney, author of the excellent The China Price (h/t to MTD):

Less than a year into her job at a shoe factory in Wenzhou, she’s thinking about quitting. Fang wants higher wages, shorter hours and better working conditions. But ultimately what she wants are skills and responsibility. She dreams of opening a store, of being her own boss. Managing her own business, Fang shouts into her cell phone over the din of machines on the assembly line, “would be better than this. It would give me an opportunity to improve myself.”

Lei, a 21-year-old migrant worker from rural Shaanxi province, would agree. She quit her job making bicycles in the northern city of Tianjin last year, in part, because she couldn’t see herself moving up in the company. At her new job as a quality inspector of mining equipment in western Xi’an, Lei earns half what she could make in a factory in southern China, but the plant offers training in quality control after work.

I suggest you read this article in its entirety. It is spot on.

The aspirations of the new generation of migrant factory workers is starting to drive a number of changes:

• Factories that treat workers like cattle will have more and more difficulties keeping a stable workforce;
• Salaries will rise, forcing manufacturers to rise prices (from what I hear, it has been happening across the board over the last 3 months);
• Clever factories will invest to improve their organization, but also to address the personal development needs of their workers. I expect this to be a long and slow process.
• A few manufacturers will realize that now is the time to get “lean“, since workers are more willing to learn and to invest themselves in their work.