There is one thing I don’t understand about Trinh’s analysis: Isn’t the Chinese labor shortage “artificial” / caused BY the gov’t locking things down?
That being the case, what on earth good does it do for “deep pocket” employers to offer higher wages? Even if the lure of higher pay encouraged workers to defy the gov’t, how could Foxconn, for example, sneak 2000 workers into some factory before the lockdowns are eased?
And then if the lockdowns are eased, people have to work: why would there be a need to pay several months wages as an incentive to bring workers back? I’d think the workers would be champing at the bit, so to speak. Unless, of course, the virus is far more deadly in China than we think, in which case China might be looking at a substantial loss of their working population for at least a generation - an even more grievous loss than what Trinh postulates — and they’d be forced to stay shut down until warm weather arrives. (Don’t ask me what they’d do next “flu” season unless a vaccine is devised.)
Something just doesn’t add up, here.
“China hands” say the workers are afraid to go to work. Because of the virus, also because of the draconian measures they may get caught up in.
Important though to note that migrants are still in a 14 day quarantine and can’t work. That ends net week for almost all.