Bridge urban-rural gap to steady labor market

Among the wide variety of topics discussed after the May 12 earthquake, one is particularly interesting: whether the quake would worsen the labor shortage in our country.

This issue has been in public focus since 2004, and the academia is divided on it.

One group of scholars thinks the labor shortage in China is at hand because the coastal areas, the traditional destination of migrant workers after they leave their rural home to seek industrial jobs, are facing a low supply of labor and the average salary is continuously rising in recent years.