Caixin Survey: Free Time and the Factory

As part of growing per-capita GDP in China, worker demands for leisure time is rising. In a recent Caixin survey on 588 manufacturing companies, these demands were cited as the primary drivers of rising labor costs.

Between 2008 and 2010, the average number of workdays in the manufacturing sector per week was above 5.7 days. In terms of number of hours worked per week, the single most influential variable was not geographical region or enterprise scale but type of industry. Employees in the textile industry had the longest workweek at 6.3 days while the chemicals industry had the shortest workweek at 5.4 days.