The latest “2020 Migrant Worker Monitoring Survey Report” released by the National Bureau of Statistics of the mainland shows that the average age of 280 million migrant workers across the continent has increased, reaching 41.4 years old in 2020, up 0.6 years from the previous (2019) year. Data from the Bureau of Statistics shows that the average age of migrant workers on the mainland was 34 years old in 2008, which means that the average age of migrant workers has increased by 7.4 years in 12 years, also reflecting the lessening of the mainland’s population and the aging of the working population.
According to the official definition, migrant workers are those who are still registered in rural areas and have been working in non-agricultural industries locally or outside for 6 months or more during the year, and they are the grassroots labor force in China.
In terms of the age structure of migrant workers, 49.4% are aged 40 and below, down 1.2 percentage points from the previous year; 26.4% are aged 50 and above, up 1.8 percentage points from the previous year, and their proportion continues to increase. In 2016, the percentage of 16-30 year olds reached 31.9%, but by 2020, the percentage will only be 22.7%, a drop of 9.2 percentage points in 4 years.
The older they are, the more people are employed nearby and back home. From the perspective of the employment place of migrant workers, the average age of local migrant workers is 46.1 years old, of which 32.9% are 40 years old or below and 38.1% are over 50 years old; the average age of migrant workers going out is 36.6 years old, of which 66.8% are 40 years old or below and 14.2% are over 50 years old.
Because of the younger average age of migrant workers going out, coupled with the large inflow of college graduates, the proportion of working-age population in developed coastal areas such as Guangdong and Zhejiang is also relatively high. Take Zhejiang as an example, as the fourth largest economic province, its total resident population in 2019 was only the tenth largest in the continent, but its mobile population surpassed that of major economic provinces such as Jiangsu and Shandong, ranking second in the continent. in 2020, the average age of Zhejiang’s 28.885 million mobile population was 34.5 years old, 76.6% were junior high school educated or below, and the ratio of men to women was 3 to 2.
According to Niu Fengrui, a researcher at the Urban Development and Environment Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Zhejiang’s private economy is the most developed in the continent, and Zhejiang’s per capita income is second only to the two major municipalities of Shanghai and Beijing, with high income naturally attracting a large population inflow. The analysis of Guangdong’s population development in 2019 released by the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Statistics points out that the large number of foreign population and the relatively high natural growth rate have slowed down the process of population aging, resulting in a slower aging of Guangdong’s population than other provinces.
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