Shanghai
will need about 500,000 highly skilled technicians within the next
five years, city officials told the first Shanghai International
Forum on Vocational Training over the weekend.
The forum attracted more than 20 scholars and business people
from all over the world to discuss the current situation and future
development of this new breed of worker.
Currently, there are more than 150,000 vacant technical
positions in the city, for people trained as computerized machine
operators and jewelry designers among other skills.
But the city's Labor and Social Security Bureau says there are
currently only 3,800 qualified senior technicians in the city, and
the gulf between supply and demand is pushing salaries for workers
significantly higher.
Several local media outlets have reported that local companies
are offering annual salaries of up to 300,000 yuan (US$36.144) for
skilled technicians -- the result of a professional shortage, said
Chen Yu of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security.
Besides high-level technicians in traditional manufacturing
industries, ordinary workers in high-tech industries -- such as IT
programmers and multi-media controllers -- also belong to the work
sector that the city is badly in need of, officials said.
"The shortage is rightly a reflection of an unbalanced
employment structure and insufficient basic vocational training in
the country," said Fan Gang, director of the National
Economic Research Institute.
As Shanghai develops its high-tech industries and becomes a
global digital manufacturing center, trained workers will become
the biggest labor class in the city, forum delegates said.
By that time, salaries for skilled professionals will also
return from the currently abnormally high levels to 4,000 to 8,000
yuan per month, officials said.
The Shanghai Vocational Training Center has launched 14 training
courses for professionals. Local training schools can bid to offer
the courses to train more professionals here, they added.
(Shanghai Daily December 8, 2003)