Err, how does one say this? Where have all the migrant workers gone?

We seem to have lost a vast swathe of the nation's lifeblood since the end of Spring Festival, sparking a shortage of workers in key industries across the country.

In just a few weeks since the start of the Year of the Rabbit, the landscape of China's labor market has been transformed. At a cursory glance, it paints a picture of a land with too many jobs and not enough workers, resulting in a wage war between employers desperate to fill vacancies from a depleted workforce.

At some places candidates no longer queue for hours hoping to get hired, HR departments are not being deluged with applications, and those who were once forced to travel hundreds of miles away from their families to find work can now get a job down the road, often with wages much higher than in the weeks before the New Year.

But what is really going on in the labor market, and is the current snapshot an accurate portrayal of what is taking place among the 150 million people who make up China's backbone, often doing hard, dirty work for long hours with low pay?

At first, I wondered whether several trains had been sent down the wrong track during the Spring Festival return travel rush, and whether somewhere in the middle of the country a million stranded migrant workers were continuing the party with only a bottle of baijiu for comfort. Or perhaps they all decided to hide for a couple of weeks forcing up the price of their labor in an elaborate game of corporate hide and seek.

But seriously, across China's manufacturing provinces and those commonly called the world's factory floor, businesses are resorting to innovative methods to lure workers.

It used to be that people flocked to the capital-rich coastal regions in search of work, but the trend seems to be reversing, sparking a fierce competition between the inland and coastal regions to attract migrant workers.