I don't know how true that is. The Chinese working in factories have no choice but to work like sheeps. Over here people would bitch for working overtime. Over there a 15 hour shift is norm.
Are Chinese workers really not as productive? Workers are like robots on a soldier line. Would North American companies really want to move manufacturing here and pay people 6 times more per hour? Health benefits and paid sick days.
It's absolutely true. No offense TVG, but you don't understand what productivity is. Productivity is the rate of output per unit of input. Hundreds of employees working long hours performing a single repetitive task is not productivity. Fewer workers performing more tasks and achieving the same or higher levels of output is productivity.
Four years ago, China's labour costs were only 4% cheaper than those in the U.S. when productivity is factored in, according to Oxford Economics. Today, with rising wages in China, and increased productivity is factored wages are equal, if not slightly higher wages in China.
That's because wages in China have risen much faster than increases in productivity. Coupled with a strengthening yuan, Chinese labor costs have grown dramatically. Meanwhile, huge productivity improvements in the U.S. have helped keep labor costs down.
Interestingly, countries with lower number of hours worked have higher productivity. China is not on here, but if it was, it would be below the bottom countries. Chinese manufacturing is a low productivity per worker model.
A rising currency, too many employees performing too few tasks, better productivity in the West, and rapidly rising wages means production in China is not a money saver that it used to be.
