Contemporary urban employment patterns among Chinese peasant workers in the 2020s

ABSTRACT The urban employment dynamics of Chinese peasant workers have transformed in the 2020s, influenced by factors like COVID-19, demographic shifts, China’s economy, urbanization, and globalization. The data presented in this paper comes from China’s national and local authorities, official publications, and reports. The findings reveal a growing trend of these workers seeking jobs closer to their hometowns, causing hiring challenges in city manufacturing sectors. We also found that young workers struggle to secure employment in emerging tertiary industries due to skill gaps, while older workers confront employment barriers from policy restrictions and market biases. This study provides an analysis of the current employment situation for peasant workers in urban areas. It offers valuable insights for policymakers to create measures that foster stable and sustainable employment opportunities for this vulnerable demographic in China.


Introduction
The urban employment landscape for Chinese peasant workers has significantly transformed in recent years.Chinese peasant workers are defined as rural hukou holders who work in urban jobs (Chan & Wei, 2019).There are two types of peasant workers: those with urban jobs within their hukou jurisdictions (local peasant workers) and those who work in non-agricultural jobs outside their hukou jurisdictions (migrant peasant workers).These workers, both local and migrant, have played a crucial role in China's urbanization journey (Fan, 2007), accounting for 44% of the urban workforce by 2013 (Wahba Tadros et al., 2021).
Since the 2020s, there has been an increase in research examining the employment situations of peasant workers (An & Sun, 2021;Che et al., 2020;Liu et al., 2023).However, An and Sun (2021) consider peasant workers a homogeneous group without considering their intergenerational differences.Che et al. (2020) solely focus on jobs in big cities, while jobs in small towns have yet to be addressed.Liu et al. (2023) mainly focused on the impact of COVID-19 on employment, overlooking other societal factors such as demographic changes in peasant workers and China's economy/property crisis.Furthermore, no studies have analyzed these changes and challenges using quantitative data from governmental authorities and official institutions.
This study aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the evolving employment dynamics within this changing demographic and go beyond the immediate context of COVID-19 to offer insights into the broader shifts and persistent challenges in their urban employment status.This research harnesses quantitative data from authoritative channels, including the State Council, major Chinese cities (e.g. the Beijing Municipal Government), official publications, esteemed Chinese universities, and prominent media outlets.The objective is to provide a detailed portrayal of the current urban employment landscape and peasant workers' occupational hurdles.Importantly, this analysis refrains from solely attributing changes to the COVID-19 pandemic, recognizing that the broader context of demographic change, urbanization, globalization trends, and China's economic/property crisis have also influenced their employment choices and challenges.The insights gained from this study are anticipated to serve as a valuable foundation for formulating policies and initiatives that foster a sustainable and equitable urban future.

Localized employment
The job market has undergone significant changes with the rise of localized jobs.According to the NBS (2023), there has been a 2.4% increase in local peasant workers, totaling 123.72 million, up by 2.93 million from the previous year.In contrast, the number of migrant peasant workers has only increased by 0.1%, around 180,000 more than the previous year, totaling 171.9 million.This means that the number of local peasant workers has increased 24 times faster than migrant peasant workers, and they now make up 41.85% of the total peasant worker population.This trend has been consistent for several years now, with the proportion of local peasant workers among all peasant workers steadily increasing, especially in the central region of China (Zhuo & Yang, 2021).Table 1 shows that from 2019 (before COVID-19) to 2022, the proportions were 40.07%, 40.62%, 41.29%, and 41.85%, respectively.This shift has resulted in smaller towns and counties becoming prime areas for employment opportunities in addition to big cities.A new concept has emerged in the labor market and manufacturing industry called "sleeping villages."These peasant workers operate across townships during the day and return to their villages at night or work in nearby towns on weekdays and return to their villages on weekends (Wang, 2023).
We argue the recent trend of localized jobs is not due to the decline in employment demand in coastal areas.Instead, it results from COVID restrictions, rapid development in small towns, and the high cost of relocating the entire family.China accounted for 29% of global manufacturing output in 2021, solidifying its position as the world's leading factory (The World Bank, 2022).However, large manufacturing plants in big cities along China's eastern coast are experiencing a severe workforce shortage.In the past, this issue was mainly observed around the Chinese New Year as a localized, discontinuous, and cyclical pattern.But since COVID-19, these dynamics seem to have become more firmly established.A recent report issued by China's MHRSS (2023) highlighted a significant shortage of peasant workers in major Chinese cities, with around 40 types of job openings related to production and manufacturing.A joint report by several Ministries of the Chinese state government revealed a workforce gap of over 30 million in China's top 10 key manufacturing sectors in 2025 (MTDPG, 2016).Therefore, the localization of employment and the return of peasant workers are not caused by the decline in labor demand in the developed coastal areas.
Instead, the pandemic has forced millions of migrant peasant workers to return to their hometowns or nearby towns to work as local peasant workers due to travel restrictions (Che et al., 2020).In addition, the county and town's economy has been developed with state policy support.In May 2022, the State Council ( 2022) mandated all departments to put in efforts to boost the development of counties and towns to address the employment of local peasant workers who could not return to their jobs in cities due to epidemic controls.In the beginning of 2023, the state government invested 6.6 billion CNY in "work as relief" initiatives (yigongdaizhen, 以工代赈) to enhance rural revitalization and provide employment to local peasant workers (An & Yang, 2022).A work relief program in Tiandong County in Guangxi province employed 60 individuals and paid them 1.3 million CNY (NDRC, 2021).With better job opportunities and improved town infrastructure, an increasing number of peasant workers have stayed in or near their hometowns.However, it is important to note that this trend of localized employment in towns differs from the Township and Village Enterprises of the 1980s (Ma & Fan, 1994).Although township enterprises still provide some jobs, most new jobs are created through government-supported programs like "work as relief" initiatives, resulting in limited coverage and unpredicted employment duration.As of June 2022, the unemployment rate for peasant workers who returned to the countryside was 9.3%, according to the NDRC (2022a).The overall urban unemployment rate in July was 5.4% (NDRC, 2022b).More support is needed to retain local peasant workers in their hometowns.
Furthermore, many migrant peasant workers return to their hometowns due to the high cost of relocating their entire family.Even though most cities have relaxed the hukou threshold and migrant peasant workers earn 5,240 CNY per month, 30.15% higher than local peasant workers (NBS, 2023), they still face a high cost of living in big cities, including housing and schooling.In addition, many younger generations, unlike their older counterparts, are unwilling to tolerate forced separation from their partners (Hu, 2023a) or leave their children alone in the countryside (Hu & Lu, 2023).Consequently, some young and middle-aged rural workers who are married and have children prefer to stay local (Zhuo & Yang, 2021).It highlights the contrasting viewpoints of young and old peasant workers.In current times, peasant workers are not a uniform social group anymore.The varying ages and generations lead to diverse decision-making, resulting in various employment challenges for the new and old generations of peasant workers.We will discuss this in detail in the following section.

Different difficulties faced by different generations of peasant workers
According to the NBS (2023), 29.2% of China's peasant workers are over 50, indicating a 1.9% increase from the previous year (See Table 2).In fact, over the past five years, approximately 25.3 million individuals in China have transitioned into aging peasant workers.This indicates that peasant workers are no longer a homogeneous social group.Instead, aging peasant workers have emerged as a significant demographic, while the new generation of peasant workers continues to join the workforce and become the mainstay of the contemporary labor force.Due to intergenerational differences, peasant workers experience various employment challenges and job-seeking difficulties.
The pandemic has hit the service sectors hard.However, we have discovered that many young peasant workers are more inclined towards risky entrepreneurship and emerging industries, instead of taking up mechanical and repetitive labor jobs with excessive overtime in factories like the previous generations.We acknowledge that the increasing significance of the tertiary sector is a longstanding feature of urbanization and globalization.Still, Li's research (2019) shows that a significant proportion (40.8%) expressed a desire to start their businesses, followed by 24.9% who wished to work in the service industry.Employment opportunities in emerging industries, such as the Internet or those with a high degree of digitalization, are in high demand (Wang, Zhou, & Cui, 2020).According to the BMBS (2021), the number of peasant workers employed in these highly digitized fields has increased by almost 90% in 2021 compared to 2020.
However, many young peasant workers in China face challenges in securing employment in emerging tertiary industries due to a lack of relevant skills and knowledge.According to an official report, around 63.1% of peasant workers reported that their education levels and skills did not match the job requirements, while just 28.0% of young peasant workers possess tertiary industry skills (Zhang, 2021).This significant gap between the increasing skill demands of emerging tertiary industries and young peasant workers' limited human capital and techniques makes it hard for them to secure employment in the job market.For this reason, they are highly likely to have unstable or part-time employment, as the CASS (2020) reported.There is a pressing need for more training and education to help them better integrate into this new field of work.
Compared to the new generation, aging peasant workers face more severe employment challenges or struggle to find jobs.Many service sectors in the tertiary industry often have age-related requirements.Thus, employers in service sectors usually choose "cherry-picking" workers with the most "desirable" attributes (Hu, 2023b).A recent survey of 35,501 questionnaires revealed that the No.1 difficulty encountered by peasant workers is being older (24.8%), followed by limited educational backgrounds (21.2%) and lacking experience and skills (19.2%) (Bao & Chu, 2022).Although jobs in the secondary industry have fewer age restrictions, these aging peasant workers face intensified job-seeking difficulties in the 2020s, particularly in the construction sector, with the highest concentration of peasant workers aged 50-59 (Department of Population and Employment Statistics, N. B. of S, 2020).During the pandemic, municipal governments in cities such as Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Tianjin introduced age-related regulations for construction workers.Men over 60 and women over 50 were prevented from participating in construction, whereas high-risk roles were limited to men under 55 and women under 45 (Lin, 2021).Since 2022, the construction industry, which employs many elderly peasant workers, has significantly reduced recruitment due to China's zero-COVID policy, slow economy, and real estate crisis.There has been a noticeable decrease in the number of peasant workers in the construction sector (See Table 3).The State Council conducted a study that revealed that 16.9% of aging peasant workers are unemployed, with 10.2% having been out of work for over three months (Yin, Ning, & Zhang, 2023).Therefore, we argue that the employment difficulties faced by the elderly are not due to a lack of manual labor skills caused by old age, but rather a lack of employment opportunities resulting from policy limitations and decreased market demand.

Conclusion
The urban employment landscape for Chinese peasant workers has experienced substantial transformations, reflecting broader trends in China's economy, urbanization, and globalization, alongside the contextual factors brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.These changes have ushered in new challenges and opportunities for this essential but vulnerable segment of the urban population in the 2020s.
One noticeable shift is the increasing preference among peasant workers for localized employment options because of COVID restrictions, rapid development in towns and counties, and the high cost of relocating the entire family.This has also led to challenges such as labor shortages in the manufacturing sector in first-tier coastal cities.We have also discovered that young and old generations of peasant workers encounter distinct employment challenges.Young workers struggle to secure employment in emerging tertiary industries due to a lack of relevant skills and knowledge, while aging workers face much more severe employment challenges and may even have difficulty finding jobs due to policy restrictions and market biases.Based on the observations of An and Sun (2021) and Che et al. (2020) on the pandemic's impact on peasant workers' jobs, the present study expands the debates to not only the impact of COVID-19 but also other societal factors such as demographic changes, China's economy, urbanization, and globalization trends.It also acknowledges the research of Chan and Wei (2019) and Hu (2023c) by deepening the understanding of the hardship of peasant workers in contemporary China.For policy implications, local governments can invest in improving infrastructure and public services in smaller towns and cities.Moreover, governments and enterprises should collaborate to provide opportunities for vocational training and skill development.Implementing these measures holds the potential to address the challenges faced by this vital yet vulnerable population and contribute to China's pursuit of sustainable urbanization.

Table 1 .
Number of local peasant workers and migrant peasant workers from 2019 to 2022 (ten thousand).Data obtained from the 2022 Peasant Worker Monitoring Survey Report (NBS, 2023).