There are about 119 million people in China aged 65-years or older, that is 8.9 percent of the total population. According to official estimates, only one quarter of them have a pension. And even those who do have a pension usually cannot rely on it for a sufficient income.
The vast majority of China’s elderly depend on their children for support or have to find part-time work to get by. And women are significantly worse off than men. It is estimated that only 20 percent of elderly women receive a pension, a pension that is, in most cases, worth a lot less than that of their male counterparts.
The official retirement age in China is 60 for men and 50 to 55 for women, but those figures are an irrelevance for most elderly people. Poorly educated women from the countryside, in particular, are almost entirely dependent on their children for income, and if their children are unwilling or unable to provide that support, they have no option but to seek out whatever work they can get.
In June this year, I wrote about Sun Liping, 65 -year-old widow who had to find work on a construction site in order to pay off medical debts accumulated during her husband’s long illness. She was promised 6,000 yuan for her back-breaking work but, after 82 days on the job, got nothing. Sun’s story may be extreme but it does illustrate many of the problems faced by elderly workers: They can usually only get poorly paid, temporary work with very little or no job security. If they are fired or are owed wages in arrears, they have very little recourse except to beg for justice.
And it is not just the elderly who are struggling. Even middle-aged workers are finding it increasingly difficult to get good jobs in an employment culture that focuses more and more on youth. The manufacturing sector has for many years only taken on production line workers under the age of 35, and there is now evidence that even white collar jobs in the financial sector and the civil service are being limited to applicants in their twenties.
The jobs available to poorly educated and low skilled workers in their 40s and 50s are largely limited to the low-end service industries; security, cleaning, child care, positions in shops and restaurants, small-scale workshops or the transport sector; again, all professions with very little job security or stability. Taxi drivers, for example, often have to work 12 hours a day, six days a week, just to get by, and are routinely squeezed the companies they rent their cab from.
Middle-aged workers can still be seen in construction and mining but this is largely because younger workers are reluctant to sign up for jobs in these arduous, hazardous and often life-threatening industries. Younger workers will often have parents or relatives who were injured on construction sites or who suffer from an incurable lung disease after working for years in the mines, and understandably they choose to avoid a similar fate if they can.
But now even job seekers in their late twenties are being excluded from the application process as employers in some professions seek to recruit ever younger employees who they think can be paid less and who will be willing to work long hours without complaint. What this short sighted policy fails to take into account however is that by excluding older workers from the job market they are simply shifting the burden to provide an income for the extended family onto the shoulders of the younger workers, who will naturally demand higher pay to cope with that burden.
China’s labour market is in a state of flux at the moment but employers are still only focusing on short-term needs. In the long term, China’s grey workforce will grow and the number of younger workers entering the workforce will fall – that is a demographic fact. The blatant age discrimination that characterises the labour market at present is not sustainable. Unless a more balanced and comprehensive labour market develops in China, the country will face an ever deepening social crisis.
The vast majority of China’s elderly depend on their children for support or have to find part-time work to get by. And women are significantly worse off than men. It is estimated that only 20 percent of elderly women receive a pension, a pension that is, in most cases, worth a lot less than that of their male counterparts.
The official retirement age in China is 60 for men and 50 to 55 for women, but those figures are an irrelevance for most elderly people. Poorly educated women from the countryside, in particular, are almost entirely dependent on their children for income, and if their children are unwilling or unable to provide that support, they have no option but to seek out whatever work they can get.
In June this year, I wrote about Sun Liping, 65 -year-old widow who had to find work on a construction site in order to pay off medical debts accumulated during her husband’s long illness. She was promised 6,000 yuan for her back-breaking work but, after 82 days on the job, got nothing. Sun’s story may be extreme but it does illustrate many of the problems faced by elderly workers: They can usually only get poorly paid, temporary work with very little or no job security. If they are fired or are owed wages in arrears, they have very little recourse except to beg for justice.
And it is not just the elderly who are struggling. Even middle-aged workers are finding it increasingly difficult to get good jobs in an employment culture that focuses more and more on youth. The manufacturing sector has for many years only taken on production line workers under the age of 35, and there is now evidence that even white collar jobs in the financial sector and the civil service are being limited to applicants in their twenties.
The jobs available to poorly educated and low skilled workers in their 40s and 50s are largely limited to the low-end service industries; security, cleaning, child care, positions in shops and restaurants, small-scale workshops or the transport sector; again, all professions with very little job security or stability. Taxi drivers, for example, often have to work 12 hours a day, six days a week, just to get by, and are routinely squeezed the companies they rent their cab from.
Middle-aged workers can still be seen in construction and mining but this is largely because younger workers are reluctant to sign up for jobs in these arduous, hazardous and often life-threatening industries. Younger workers will often have parents or relatives who were injured on construction sites or who suffer from an incurable lung disease after working for years in the mines, and understandably they choose to avoid a similar fate if they can.
But now even job seekers in their late twenties are being excluded from the application process as employers in some professions seek to recruit ever younger employees who they think can be paid less and who will be willing to work long hours without complaint. What this short sighted policy fails to take into account however is that by excluding older workers from the job market they are simply shifting the burden to provide an income for the extended family onto the shoulders of the younger workers, who will naturally demand higher pay to cope with that burden.
China’s labour market is in a state of flux at the moment but employers are still only focusing on short-term needs. In the long term, China’s grey workforce will grow and the number of younger workers entering the workforce will fall – that is a demographic fact. The blatant age discrimination that characterises the labour market at present is not sustainable. Unless a more balanced and comprehensive labour market develops in China, the country will face an ever deepening social crisis.