A new breed of young female workers in China

NYT story, which presents not-your-average, just-off-the-farm-and-willing-to-work-at-any-price female laborer:

If Wang Jinyan, an unemployed factory worker with a middle school education, had a résumé, it might start out like this: “Objective: seeking well-paid, slow-paced assembly-line work in air-conditioned plant with Sundays off, free wireless Internet and washing machines in dormitory. Friendly boss a plus.”

As she eased her way along a gantlet of recruiters in this manufacturing megalopolis one recent afternoon, Ms. Wang, 25, was in no particular rush to find a job. An underwear company was offering subsidized meals and factory worker fashion shows. The maker of electric heaters promised seven-and-a-half-hour days. “If you’re good, you can work in quality control and won’t have to stand all day,” bragged a woman hawking jobs for a shoe manufacturer.

Ms. Wang flashed an unmistakable look of ennui and popped open an umbrella to shield her fair complexion from the South China sun. “They always make these jobs sound better than they really are,” she said, turning away. “Besides, I don’t do shoes. Can’t stand the smell of glue.”

Assertive, self-possessed workers like Ms. Wang have become a challenge for the industrial titans of the Pearl River Delta that once filled their mammoth workshops with an endless stream of pliant labor from China’s rural belly.

In recent months, as the country’s export-driven juggernaut has been revived and many migrants have found jobs closer to home, the balance of power in places like Zhongshan has shifted, forcing employers to compete for new workers — and to prevent seasoned ones from defecting to sweeter prospects.

Long predicted by demographers, China starts a long uphill climb on labor costs and demands.  The supply of young workers has peaked and will drop by a third over the next decade or so.

As usual now, we are told that this generation ain't interested in the "eat bitterness" sacrifices of their parents, nor are they interested in returning to the land:

Guo Yuhua, a sociologist at Tsinghua University, said the new cohort of itinerant workers was better educated, Internet-savvy and covetous of the urban niceties they discovered after leaving the farm. “They want a life just like city folk, and they have no interest in going back to being farmers,” said Ms. Guo, who studies China’s 230 million-strong migrant population.

Listen to this 28-year-old male laborer:

“Money is important, but it’s also important to have less pressure in your life.”

WHAAAT?

The generational divide should strike any developing/developed economy as familiar:  parents see lazy kids who expect entitlements and kids see parents afraid to buck the system and make their legitimate demands known.

I would say the ideological infection is complete.

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[Ajf 6]

In order that people may be happy in their work, these things are needed: they must be fit for it; they must not do much of it; and they must have a sense of success in it. Post by Ajf6