China: Surplus labour and migration

The populations of most developing countries have been growing rapidly in recent decades. During the 1970s and 1980s, the number of persons of working age has often grown even faster than total populations. The struggle to provide enough employment for a burgeoning labour force often fails, resulting in high unemployment plus a large part of the working population “visibly underemployed” (working fewer hours or days than they would like) or “invisibly underemployed” (doing work of extremely low productivity for low income or underutilizing skills).