Thanks to a formerly cheap labor pool, crucial for building the ‘world factory’, China has become the world’s biggest manufacturing country making one fifth of the global manufacturing products. However the country is moving away from this model. Wages soar in the world’s second-largest economy, when the Chinese yuan strengthens. According to a 2015 CNN report, since 2001, hourly manufacturing wages have increased by an average of 12% every year. So how cheap is ‘Made-in-China’ labor? According to the Oxford Economics’ report earlier this year, only 4% cheaper than in the US.
10 years ago, workers in a typical Smartphone factory could not afford a Smartphone. Today almost every assembly worker has one. According to a 2014 China Briefing report, average factory worker pay in China is $27.50 per day. The workers are happy, but their employers are not. When the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai asked it members what their biggest challenge was, over 90 % of them replied “rising costs,” according to the Economist.
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