Voting with their feet

Help Wanted: China Finds Itself With a Labor Shortage By JIM YARDLEY and DAVID BARBOZA

...young migrant workers coveted by factories are gaining bargaining power and many are choosing to leave the low pay and often miserable conditions in Guangdong. In a nondemocratic China, it is the equivalent of "voting with their feet."

March is one of the most important hiring months for China's factories, yet some analysts believe that the current shortfalls are the beginning of a long-term trend that is already bringing wage pressures and could eventually erode China's position as the world's dominant low-cost producer...

The shift, which experts say will happen gradually, began last year and is a result of two decades of strict family planning, which has made China one of the most rapidly aging countries in the world...

China remains a country where migrant workers are routinely exploited. But after a decade of stagnant wages, these workers are showing more willingness to demand their rights. Last year, factory workers rioted and held strikes in Guangdong. Other workers just left.

They can do that because economic growth in other regions has created increasing competition for workers. Many are leaving Guangdong for the rival Yangtze River Delta region near Shanghai, where many factories offer higher salaries. Others are starting to find work in larger cities in interior provinces. Some are simply returning to the farm...

Factories covet young, female workers like Ms. Sheng because they are considered better at assembly line work and more docile than young men. In the past, these workers were largely cut off from the outside world, but now they use text messages or e-mail to check with friends at other factories about wages and treatment.

"I checked the Internet and learned that the pay level in Shanghai is better than here," Ms. Sheng said. Of the 30 workers who arrived with her three years ago, only 7 or 8 remain at the factory.