Despite an increase in the demand for temporary workers, the number of such people who are taking up positions in manufacturing decreased greatly in the second half of last year, a recent analysis report said.

Industrial insiders blamed the drop on small and medium-sized enterprises' slower productivity, which itself resulted from rising labor and production costs, a rising yuan and tightened credit policies.

The number of temporary workers who have manufacturing jobs in 15 large Chinese cities decreased by about 40 percent in the second half of last year, the report said.

The report was published by Economic Information, a publication affiliated with the Xinhua News Agency, and the Seebon Human Resources Co, one of the leading labor outsourcing companies in Guangdong province, a manufacturing hub in South China.

The analysis was conducted using information mined from Seebon's human resource database, which takes into account 22 provinces, four autonomous regions and four municipalities in China, as well as from government statistics.

The report looked at the manufacturing, financing, retail, wholesale, shipping and storing and postal industries. It did not, though, take small cities into account, largely because few temporary workers take jobs in such places.

In contrast to manufacturing, both demand and pay for temporary workers increased in the financial, retail, wholesale and shipping and storage industries last year.

"The industrial restructuring taking place in coastal regions has helped boost the demand for qualified workers in the financing, retail, wholesale and shipping and storage sectors," said Feng Shengping, director of the Guangdong Situation Research Center.

Meanwhile, a labor shortage, found mostly in coastal provinces like Guangdong and Zhejiang, has helped increase workers' salaries, Feng said.

In the report, Liu Yajuan, a doctorate candidate with the University of Science and Technology Beijing, predicted the demand for temporary workers will continue to increase in the years ahead in large second-tier cities, such as Wuxi, Wuhan, Shenyang, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Changsha, as will their pay.

"There will be more job opportunities in these cities thanks to strong industrial and economic development," Liu said.

But labor shortages will remain common in some big coastal cities, such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen, since an increasing number of companies have moved their manufacturing businesses to places inland, she said.

qiuquanlin@chinadaily.com.cn