Wage growth in China appears to be driving an exit of workers from the country’s fishing sector. In addition, China’s fisheries sector is feeling demographic pressures, with labor costs rising as China’s population gradually ages.
China’s workforce contracted for the first time this year, while a government policy of statutory minimum wages to increase consumer spending has led to strong wage growth over the past decade.
In response, one key fishing port has issued the country’s first-ever set of pay guidelines in a bid to reassure and attract more workers. The Social Security Bureau in Xiangshan – a sub-district of the huge Zhoushan fishing port on China’s east coast – has published a salary scale for directors and laborers on board trawlers, with monthly wages ranging from CNY 7,000 (USD 994, EUR 895) to CNY 11,000 (USD 1,562, EUR 1,407) for a “normal worker” and rising to CNY 14,000 (USD 1,988, EUR 1,791) to CNY 18,000 (USD 2,566, EUR 2,303) for a chief engineer.
The note has been published across the populous inland provinces of Anhui, Henan, and Hunan – key sources of workers for labor-intensive sectors such as fishing.
Distant-water fishery wages range between CNY 80,000 (USD 11,587, EUR 10,238) and CNY 120,000 (USD 17,367, EUR 15,357) per year “depending on performance,” according to advertisements placed by an employment agency based at the National Distant-Water Fishery Base in Zhoushan, one of the country’s leading fishery ports.
That figure looks alluring, given the average fishing family income averaged CNY 19,885 (USD 2,880, EUR 2,545) in 2018, according to statistics published by China’s Ministry of Agriculture.
Photo courtesy of Qin Jin/Shutterstock
