By definition, a labor shortage forms when the number of jobs outnumbers available workers. On the surface, the giant gap between the two variables has been created in China by fast recovering businesses and unmatched supply of migrant workers.

A Wall Street Journal article looked into the issue in depth and summarized four factors:

1. Structural problem: "Many of the outstanding job vacancies are due to a lack of skilled workers as segments of China's export industry crawl up the value chain." Meantime, younger migrant workers aren't interested in low-paying, physically demanding work.

2. Growing income at home for farmers. "Farming is becoming more rewarding than cleaning skyscraper windows in some places." Some farmers live on rental income of their farmland to large state agricultural enterprises.

3. "...The construction boom and fast economic growth in second-tier inland cities such as Chongqing, Wuhan and Nanchang. Many migrant workers prefer these places because salaries are in some cases almost on par with Shanghai's and it's simply closer to home."

4. Generation gap. While migrant workers in their late 40s or early 50s are gradually returning home, their children, who have been raised in relatively good conditions, are under much less pressure to make hard money in order support themselves or their (smaller) families, thanks to the one child policy.

The analysis is solid, but nonetheless incomplete. A quick glimpse of the 74 comments (all written in Chinese, some by self-claimed migrant workers) on this article reveals one simple, pragmatic problem: low wages and lack of protection.

(To be continued.)