What Is a Labor Force?

There are broad and narrow senses of labor. In the broadest sense, the labor force refers to the entire population. The labor force in the narrow sense refers to the labor-capable population. In actual statistics, indicators that consider two factors, working age and working capacity, include working age population and total social labor resources.

[láo dòng lì]

(1) [labor, manpower; labor force; work force]:

Labor power

We understand the labor force or labor ability as the sum of physical strength and intelligence that exists in the human body, that is, the living body, and is used whenever a person produces a use value. ^[5]

On December 6, 2015, Sun Yat-sen University released a blue book entitled "A Survey of Chinese Labor Force Dynamics", focusing on the current situation and changes of the Chinese labor force. It was launched in 2011 and has now completed one trial survey and two formal national surveys.

The survey sample covers 29 provinces and cities nationwide except Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Tibet and Hainan. The survey object is all laborers aged 15 to 64 in the sample households. A total of 401 villagers questionnaires, 14226 family questionnaires and 23594 individual labor questionnaires were completed. By conducting a dynamic bi-annual survey on households and individual laborers in China's urban and rural areas that use villages as their tracking scope, the social structure of the village community and the changes and interactions among individuals and laborers are systematically monitored.

Through continuous tracking in 2012 and 2014, it is found that compared with the 2012 survey, the gender, age and regional composition of the labor force are almost the same, and the age structure dominated by youth labor force no longer exists; secondly, the regional distribution of China's labor force is uneven Nearly half (47.16%) of the labor force is distributed in the central provinces.In the labor force structure, young workers aged 15-29 account for 33.07%, middle-age workers aged 30-44 account for 32.80%, and senior workers aged 45 and over account for 31.86%.

The size of the labor force family shows that most of the current labor force comes from small and medium-sized families, with an average family size of 4.32. The proportion of family members with 3 and 4 members was higher, being 21.06% and 20.96%, and the proportion of family members with 6 or more members was only 22.95%. From the perspective of regional differences, the average family size of the labor force in the western region is smaller than that in the east.

In addition, in terms of work experience, the majority of the working-age population have work experience, and the proportion of non-workers is less than 20%; more than half of the labor force has agricultural work experience; of the labor force with work experience, three or more workers make up 71. %. In terms of employment status, the employment status of the Chinese labor force is dominated by employees (46.34%), followed by farming (35.33%), and again self-employed workers and employers.

In terms of rural labor, more than 26.77% of rural laborers have the experience of going out to work, and more than 40% are still preparing to go out to work.

In 2014, the highest proportion of junior high school graduates in China's labor force was 46.97%, vocational high schools, technical schools, technical secondary schools, and university colleges were all about 6%, while the proportion of college-level or higher education was only 5.17%. The average length of education of the labor force is 9.28 years. The education level of the elderly labor force is significantly lower than that of the middle and low age labor forces. The education level of the labor force in the eastern region is significantly higher than that in the central and western regions.

On the other hand, the proportion of 13.99% of workers aged 20-24 who have participated in (at least 5 days) professional and technical training in the past two years is the highest. After the age group of 35-39, professional technical training and have obtained professional and technical qualification certificates (practicing qualifications) ) The proportion has dropped sharply. This age ratio is also comparable to a sharp decline in income levels.

Unlike in the past, more than half of the labor force reads newspapers, uses mobile phones to send text messages, write letters, and bank ATM withdrawals are all okay, but only more than a quarter of the labor force is completely okay in using online banking and buying train tickets online . ^[8]