Number of migrant workers in China 2013-2023

In 2023 there were approximately 297.5 million migrant workers in China. Nearly 121 million of them were local migrant workers, working in the vicinity of their place of home, while 176.6 million worked at more distant places in their home province or in regions far away. The number of migrant workers increased slightly by around 1.9 million people in 2023.

Migrant workers in China

The total number of migrant workers in China has increased steadily, except for 2020. In 2022, migrant workers in China accounted for more than 20 percent of the total population and roughly 38 percent of the Chinese labor force. It is worth noting that nearly half of migrant workers left their hometowns without their families. In terms of education, the majority of migrant workers in China are moderately educated, i.e. less than 15 percent of them did not get to finish middle school. Migrant workers contribute significantly to China’s urbanization and modernization. Roughly 27 percent of them were employed in the manufacturing industry in 2022, and around 18 percent in the construction sector.

Wages and employment

There has been a considerable rise in the average monthly income of migrant workers in recent years, which reached 4,780 yuan in 2023 – more than two times as much as in 2013. However, migrant workers are still not being treated equally. At least the share of migrant workers who did not receive their wages on time has decreased significantly from 4.1 percent in 2008 to less than 1 percent in recent years. This is only a small improvement, though, since unemployment is quite high among migrant workers: In 2012, some 7.7 percent of migrant workers were registered as unemployed in western China, a percentage much higher than the national unemployment rate of approximately 4 percent.