Around 2010, industrial enterprises in the east Coast appeared the phenomenon of “recruitment difficulties” and “labor shortage”, which has not been fundamentally solved in the past ten years, and has gradually spread to the central region. But on the whole, industrial enterprises are difficult to employ, in fact, mainly belong to structural contradictions.

On the one hand, this structural contradiction is manifested by the decrease in the supply of young workers of the right age due to the change of population structure, the reluctance of young workers to enter factories due to the low wage level, and the decrease in the number of workers in the central and western regions. As a result, there is a shortage in the supply of many low-skilled jobs. On the other hand, this kind of structural contradiction is mainly manifested in the lack of highly skilled young and middle-aged technicians in manufacturing enterprises. With the continuous optimization and upgrading of advanced manufacturing industry, especially in the aspects of intelligent transformation and digital transformation, industrial enterprises have higher and higher requirements for the technical level of workers, who can meet the requirements of enterprises, high-quality, composite technical workers are often in short supply.

From the practice of the east coast, especially the manufacturing provinces of Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and other places, the phenomenon of the lack of young and middle-aged technicians in manufacturing enterprises is widespread. Solving the employment problem in industrial enterprises requires more cross-sectoral cooperation and systemic solutions at the national level. This research focuses on the lack of high-skilled young and middle-aged technicians in manufacturing enterprises. The research results are now reported as follows.

01. Reasons for the difficulty in hiring “highly skilled” jobs in industrial enterprises

(1) The employment concept fails to keep up with the development of The Times, leading to the reluctance of many young college students to engage in technical jobs in industrial enterprises. In these two years, most of the new generation of post-1995 and post-2000 employees have grown up in the environment of Internet popularization, so they are generally not willing to accept the relatively strict discipline and boring working mode of industrial enterprises. And long for a career or position with high time freedom. Surveys have found that recent graduates would rather work in an office with a monthly salary of around 4,000 yuan than as a senior technician in a factory with a monthly salary of around 8,000 yuan. Even at relatively stable state-owned enterprises, graduates would rather work at Nanjing Lukou Airport for a salary of around 4,000 than work at the CRRC Puzhen Rolling Stock Plant in the same city for around 6,000. Moreover, this concept has been taken to an extreme in some developed cities. At job fairs, college students are even reluctant to know and contact any job information about manufacturing factories. The phenomenon has been exacerbated by the traditional belief that parents want their children to find a “decent white-collar” job after graduation, as a large number of children from the working class have gained the chance to go to university following the expansion of university enrollment. But in fact, many modern factories have long been rid of the labor-intensive mode of production, the level of automation and factory cleanliness is very high.

(2) The lack of a corresponding supporting system for the development of vocational education, many parents dare not let their children engage in technical jobs in industrial enterprises

China’s experience in developing vocational education is mainly based on the German practice of dividing academic and technical paths after the age of 16 in junior high school. However, in the current context of building a strong manufacturing country, such a simple diversion approach ignores the construction of a social support system compatible with vocational education, so it is impossible to truly solve the problem of “shortage of skilled workers” in Chinese manufacturing. During the research in Taizhou, Jiangsu Province, we found that the pension of enterprise employees with 40 years of working age is only more than 2,000 yuan, while that of public institution employees is more than 8,000 yuan. This difference in the pension system caused by the history of employees’ retirement has intensified parents’ biased knowledge of career choice. More lead to children and parents in advance to fight for “high school entrance examination” to a good high school, to fight for “college entrance examination” to a good university of various internal paper phenomenon (such as all kinds of cram school). We investigated Siemens’ subsidiary in China and found that it was very common for a young project manager with a monthly salary of 3,500 euros to lead a team of technical workers with a monthly salary of 8,000 euros for more than 30 years of working experience in supporting projects in China supported by the German headquarters. In German companies, there is no recognition that managerial positions must be paid more than skilled workers, and workers’ seniority wages (which to some extent represent technical proficiency) account for a large proportion of comprehensive wages.

(3) The narrow certification channels for technicians, resulting in a lot of self-taught technical workers because of the lack of corresponding “certificates”, can not engage in industrial enterprises in the highly skilled technical work

In the investigation, we found that in the automobile repair, CNC equipment maintenance and other industries, many young technicians who are willing to bear hardships and study hard under the guidance of the old master can fully engage in high-skill work on their own, but because of the lack of education or certification, it is difficult to enter high-level enterprises to engage in suitable work.

(4) A considerable number of higher vocational colleges of engineering are short of teachers with strong practical ability and competent for technical skills education and teaching, resulting in many graduates of higher vocational colleges failing to master basic technical skills

Many higher vocational colleges mainly rely on regional economy and local high employment to attract enrollment, and their teaching methods are still in the “compressed biscuit” state of ordinary undergraduate. In terms of talent training, many concepts, ideas and forms have been put forward. There are numerous research articles, but there are not many practical results and experiences that can be copied and promoted. In fact, after students arrive at school, they lack the guidance of a large number of teachers with practical operation ability. Some schools even purchase advanced and sophisticated equipment. Many internship tutors only learn the “fur” of some operations from equipment suppliers, resulting in a large number of idle or inefficient operation of internship equipment. And off-campus with practical practical ability of workers and technicians, but because of the lack of college teachers this high threshold of certification, can not enter the school teaching, some meet the conditions, the time to school teaching can not be guaranteed.

(5) Industrial enterprises lack a platform for the continued development of technicians, resulting in many young technicians are not good at based on the position to become talented

Improving the market position of skilled workers should mainly be achieved by increasing the income of skilled workers, but increasing the career development path of skilled workers can be regarded as an effective measure. In the investigation, we found that due to the fierce competition among enterprises, orders are often not saturated, which leads to the decline in the salary level and limited career development platform for technicians who are mainly based on piecework hour assessment. There is also no “use” for technicians who leave the factory without equipment support. Therefore, how to encourage skilled workers to become talented based on their posts and create a development platform for skilled workers has become an important factor to stabilize the skilled workers.