How Could the World's Largest Population Suffer a Labor Shortage? [Associate Editors' View]

David Wang owns a small factory in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, China, manufacturing consumer electronic goods. His factory employs some 300 people, all from rural areas of neighboring provinces such as Hunan and Guangxi. Every year, after the Chinese Spring Festival holiday, David would find that some of his employees would not report back to work. A number of them would come back days later, citing bad transportation or some other likely excuse. David knows, of course, that they just wanted to stay at home far away a day or two longer to get ready for another entire year of hard work without being able to visit until the next Spring Festival. But this year, to David´s surprise, almost one third of his workforce is still missing ten days after the holiday officially ended. It seems that this time they will most likely remain at home, and not return, for good.