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Recently, foreign trade orders have been cancelled. Novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak in China in January this year was almost halted after the outbreak of China's epidemic. After March, with the domestic epidemic under control and resumption of production, domestic manufacturing capacity gradually recovered, and domestic demand gradually recovered. However, the epidemic continued to spread around the world, curbing foreign demand, resulting in a large number of recent reduction, suspension and cancellation of overseas orders.
The cancellation of foreign trade orders has a direct impact on the production and operation activities of enterprises, but also on the employment of migrant workers. Foreign trade manufacturing enterprises are an important field of migrant workers' employment, which absorb a large number of rural surplus labor and improve the income of farmers. As the epidemic continues to spread and worsen in foreign countries, I'm afraid there will be greater risk and pressure of order cancellation in the future, and more migrant workers will face the situation of returning home.
According to the migrant workers monitoring survey report released by the National Bureau of statistics in April 2019, there were 290 million migrant workers in China in 2018. Employment in the primary industry accounts for 0.4%, employment in the secondary industry accounts for 49.1%, and employment in the tertiary industry accounts for 50.5%. It can be seen that the tertiary industry and the secondary industry, which are greatly affected by the epidemic, are the main areas of migrant workers' employment.
First of all, the impact of the epidemic on the employment of migrant workers is seen from the tertiary industry, namely the service industry. With China's economic development entering a new normal, service industry has become a new driving force to support economic growth. Service industry not only provides migrant workers with sufficient jobs, but also creates a relatively loose entrepreneurial environment. For example, catering, accommodation, housekeeping, maintenance and other life service industries have a great demand for migrant workers. The service industry is the most directly impacted area, especially accommodation, catering, tourism, entertainment and other industries. Because novel coronavirus pneumonia epidemic is more infectious, personnel flow and travel restrictions are factors that cause the demand for services to fall off, so the producer of service industry has to go out of business and stop business to reduce service supply. With the basic control of the epidemic in China, the domestic service industry has gradually recovered, but the spread of the global epidemic will also affect the development of the service industry to a certain extent, and many migrant workers will be unemployed at home due to the impact of the service industry.
Secondly, the impact of the epidemic on the employment of migrant workers is seen from the secondary industry, namely industry. Manufacturing industry and construction industry are the main fields of migrant workers' employment. Construction industry is closely related to the development of manufacturing industry. The contraction of manufacturing industry caused by the epidemic at home and abroad is not conducive to the development of construction industry, but a new round of infrastructure construction and expanding domestic demand policy may make up for the loss of construction industry. In the manufacturing industry, the manufacturing enterprises supplying the domestic market will gradually recover with the control of the domestic epidemic, but will be impacted by the supply chain brought by the outbreak of the overseas epidemic; the foreign trade manufacturing enterprises will be directly affected by the shrinking demand of the overseas market. The export of manufacturing industry and the related industrial chain have absorbed a large number of migrant workers, and most of them are employed as temporary workers. Therefore, the negative impact of the epidemic on the export processing industry will directly worsen the employment stability of migrant workers. Although China's export industry shows a trend of continuous upgrading, most of them still belong to a typical labor-intensive or low-tech product structure. When the orders of enterprises are considerable, it will expand the employment demand for migrant workers, and even form a certain amount or structural "migrant workers shortage"; when the demand of foreign countries shrinks, the production and operation of export enterprises is difficult to maintain, inevitably bringing the situation that migrant workers are forced to return home, resulting in a certain degree of "return tide".
Thirdly, the impact of the epidemic on the employment of migrant workers is seen from the perspective of the primary industry, namely agriculture. Agriculture is the basic industry and guarantee industry for farmers' employment. The impact of the epidemic on agriculture will be directly reflected in the employment of migrant workers. From the point of view of the production end, the purchase channel of agricultural means of production is blocked, and the farmers cannot buy the required means of production in time, which will have an impact on agricultural production; from the point of view of the circulation end, the epidemic situation will affect the smoothness of the transportation channel of agricultural products, especially the fresh agricultural products such as vegetables and fruits, because of the particularity of storage conditions, the circulation end is blocked, which will have a negative impact on agricultural production; from the perspective of import and export On the one hand, the spread of foreign epidemic affects the import and export of agricultural products. Recently, some countries have taken measures to restrict the import and export of agricultural products, especially grain. On the other hand, from the consumer side, the impact on the production side and the circulation side will inevitably affect the consumption demand of agricultural products and bring about the price rise of agricultural products.
There is no doubt that the epidemic has a negative impact on the employment of migrant workers, and the effective response is to adjust the employment structure of migrant workers. First, the government should timely and accurately provide and release information on labor supply and demand, so that migrant workers can find jobs as soon as possible. At the same time, the government should provide effective and targeted public services for migrant workers looking for job opportunities, and do a good job of intermediary services in the labor market. Encourage migrant workers to actively participate in online vocational skills training to cope with the possible rebound in employment demand after the epidemic is stable. Secondly, under the same conditions, the government should give priority to accepting the application of post subsidy, social security subsidy and on-the-job training subsidy for export manufacturing enterprises that are affected by the epidemic situation and faced with temporary production and operation difficulties. Although the impact of novel coronavirus pneumonia has been the first to bear the brunt of the impact of the service industry, the online service industry has blowout during the outbreak. Therefore, migrant workers can be guided to transfer to the service industry, from the offline production end to the online logistics and distribution end. Third, actively guide the transformation and upgrading of the structure of the manufacturing industry and service industry, and strive to achieve the positive interaction between the stable employment of migrant workers and industrial upgrading. Fourthly, in line with the task of building a well-off society in an all-round way, we should actively guide migrant workers returning home to take part in spring ploughing preparation, agricultural infrastructure construction, and positioning the employment target on the new agricultural operation subject. Fifthly, with the implementation of the digital rural strategy as the starting point, we will promote the transfer of rural labor force and employment, actively carry out e-commerce training for returning migrant workers and rural entrepreneurial youth, so that more farmers can benefit from the development of agricultural e-commerce.
Li chunding is a professor of School of economics and management, China Agricultural University, and director of Department of economics and trade
Lin Xin is a doctoral student of School of economics and management, China Agricultural University
Source: Nanfang Daily
Editor in charge: Wu Dan
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