China: number of migrant workers in major destination regions 2021

In 2021, the number of migrant workers in the Yangtze River Delta in China recovered from the drop caused by the coronavirus pandemic and increased to around 53.39 million, while the number of workers in the Pearl River Delta declined slightly to around 42.19 million. In 2012, the number of migrant workers in the Yangtze and Pearl River Delta had ranged at around 59.4 and 52.0 million respectively.

Number of migrant workers working in the Yangtze, Pearl River Delta, and Jing-Jin-Ji Metropolitan Region in China from 2017 to 2021 (in millions)

Characteristic	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021
-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-

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Release date

April 2022

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Region

China

Survey time period

2017 to 2021

Supplementary notes

The data have been collected through a survey which covered around 226,000 rural workers from 31 provinces, 1,587 districts and 8,488 villages. Migrant laborers are defined as workers that are still registered as rural permanent residents, but have left their place of origin for more than six months in order to find work in another place. They either stay in the same province or move to another province in search of work.

Yangtze River Delta includes Shanghai, parts of Zhejiang and Jiangsu province. Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Ningbo, Suzhou, Wuxi are a few of the major cities in this region.
Pearl River Delta covers the area around Guangdong province in South China. Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Macau, Huizhou, Dongguang are the main cities in this region.
Jing-Jin-Ji Metropolitan Region includes Beijing, Tianjin, and surrounding regions in Hebei province.

Figures for earlier years have been taken from previous publications.

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