Shanghai labor force sufficient for growth

Shanghai still has the labor resources needed to support its vigorous development despite a steadily growing elderly population that has made it one of the country's most silver-haired cities, the municipal government said on Tuesday.

The number of Shanghai residents aged 60 or older hit 5.82 million last year, accounting for 23.4 percent of the city's permanent residents, up by 8.3 percentage points from a decade ago, the government said at a news conference introducing the city's statistics from the 2020 national census.

Across the country, the average proportion of the population aged 60 or older was 18.7 percent, according to census data released last week.

The census also revealed a slight increase in the proportion of children aged 14 and below in Shanghai over the past decade. They accounted for 9.8 percent of the city's total permanent population, up by 1.2 percentage points.

The increase was mainly driven by the launch of the universal second-child policy in 2016, but the number of newborns has been on the decline after a spike that year.

However, the city government said it is confident Shanghai has abundant labor resources to support its vigorous development.

Zhu Min, director of the Shanghai Statistics Bureau, said 2.72 million people were born in Shanghai from 1951 to 1960, with a birth peak in 1954, and those still alive are now aged between 60 and 70.

"But many such younger elderly are still making due contributions to society, communities and families," he said.

"We'll collaborate with relevant authorities to conduct forward-looking research to see how to play up their potential and develop the silver-haired economy."

Zhu said it is common for people to opt for fewer children after a society's economic development reaches a certain level. But he also attributed the city's relatively low proportion of children and adolescents to its high percentage of permanent residents from other parts of the country. The census said there were 10.48 million of them-accounting for 42.1 percent of the city's population.

"The proportion of children and adolescents among them is low," Zhu said.

More importantly, he said, Shanghai still ranks sixth in terms of the proportion of the population aged between 15 and 59 among all the provincial-level regions on the Chinese mainland.

Official data showed that the number of Shanghai residents in that age bracket totaled 16.62 million, or 66.8 percent of the population, which was 3.4 percentage points higher than the national average.

"Moreover, their average years of education was 12.6 years, an increase of 1.4 years compared with a decade ago," said Shi Fang, deputy director of the bureau.

She added that the census showed Shanghai ranked first in the country in terms of the percentage of individuals who had received senior middle school education or above.