Guangdong Companies Talk Wages

Wages are on the rise again in Guangdong， a big exporting province， and across much of the rest of China. In recent months， there has been much anecdotal evidence of labour shortages and wage hikes on the south-ern and eastern coasts. We showed a while ago that the labour market had made a surprising V-shaped recovery in coastal areas and was also strength-ening in central and western China，where the downturn was less severe (see On the Ground， 9 December 2009，'China - Job watch'). In Charts 1 and 2， we show the most recent data on job vacancies from local job centres. Chart 1 shows the growth in job vacancies，while Chart 2 shows the ratio between job vacancies and applications. Things seem to be pretty much back to pre-crisis levels.