The Monday, 24 November 2008 edition of The Shanghai Daily reported:

“A Shandong Provincial Federation of Trade Unions official said employees with enterprises and institutions in urban areas totaled 9.14 million by late September, a year-on-year decrease of 38,000 workers.”

Qingdao, of course, is the center of fermentation chemistry for Shandong Province (thank the Germans a hundred years ago for that contribution), textile manufactures, and has been an up-and-coming services outsourcing hub. It is also the home of the beer of the same name.

Several things that come to mind with the statistics are: of course the numbers do not include migrant workers, the phantom labor force without formal permission to reside in the cities in which they build the high-rises and roads that take the migrant maids and nannies to middle class homes; even the official statistics forsaw and downturn in the economy overall before the global economic downturn; and local officials of the small towns and cities from which the migrants come had best be prepared for a bit of discontent, as more jobs dry up along the coast.

But then again, don’t think that just because workers are gravitating back to their hometowns the east coast cities will see less social pressure:

“Qingdao, for instance, has dealt with 7,897 cases of labor disputes since the beginning of the year, up 141.6 percent from last year.

“Half of those disputed cases were about labor reward and another 30 percent involved social insurance and welfare.”