Migrant workers given cash to train

Authorities are dangling cash subsidies before rural migrant workers who sign up for vocational training programs ranging from vehicle maintenance to housekeeping and e-commerce, as part of a broader effort to curb joblessness among vulnerable groups.

In a guideline dated Dec 28 but unveiled on Friday, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security urged local authorities to increase skills training for out-of-town workers in a wide range of sectors — including construction, repair, security and logistics, in which they can be employed in large numbers — and help them better adapt to life in their adopted communities.

The guideline encouraged employers to host training programs for fresh recruits. Industry associations are asked to roll out trainings based on the needs of member enterprises.

The scope of the training programs can expand to cover emerging sectors such as e-commerce, digital economy and artificial intelligence when it comes to younger and more capable workers. Tech companies have been asked to coach migrants to become livestream hosts, designated drivers, and food and parcel delivery workers, it said.

"Migrant workers are crucial components of the industrial workforce, and they are a prime target of government efforts to promote the high-quality development of the population and achieve common prosperity," the guideline said in its opening paragraph, referring to the national campaign to curb the wealth gap and enlarge the middle-income group.

Trainees can get subsidies for taking time off work to learn skills, and those from financially strapped families can receive extra subsidies to ease accommodation costs, the guideline noted.

Employers offering jobs to migrant workers can also apply for reimbursement from the government for their training costs.

Migrant workers are among the priority groups on employers' radar, alongside college graduates and veterans.

China had about 295 million such workers by the end of 2022, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. More than half are employed in the service sector, and about 70 million of them work outside their home provinces, the bureau said.

A 2022 research paper by Xia Zhuzhi, a professor at Wuhan University, found that Hubei province, which supplies hundreds of thousands of migrant workers to coastal factories in Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong provinces each year, was seeing more of these workers stay home due to employment difficulties, and for those still trying to work in big cities, their income has shrunk despite working longer hours.

The stepped-up efforts to train less-skilled workers are part of a national drive to promote vocational education and bolster the supply of skilled workers with an aim to upgrade the labor-intensive manufacturing sector.

Zhang Rongkai is among a growing cohort of vocational college graduates who've helped their rural families shake off poverty by landing a well-paid job.

Born and raised in a rural part of Henan province, Zhang took a three-year course at a vocational college in 2018 in Hebei province, where he studied electrical automation. Upon graduation in 2021, he landed a job in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, which he left last year for a better paid position at a factory in Shanghai making pharmaceutical equipment.

"Workers with skills are in high demand," Zhang said, adding that his unskilled colleagues are being replaced by robot arms at an alarming rate. "That's what I have observed at the factories, because that's the most cost-effective choice for employers."