Jenny Chan interviewed by Rachel Cheung for The Wire China, in “China’s Aging Migrant Workforce,” 1 Jun 2025.
The Big Picture
Some 300 million Chinese workers are facing a more precarious future amid the country’s economic transition.
In 2008, when the Chinese government began to compile official statistics on the country’s army of migrant workers, the average migrant worker was 34 years old and employed on a construction site or a factory assembly line. Seventeen years on, writes Rachel Cheung, he or she is 43 and more likely to be in the “gig” sector, delivering packages or driving a DiDi. One-third of them are now over 50 with fewer protections. “What is left for them is basically more informal work,” Jenny Chan, a sociologist at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, says of older migrants.Even though the age profile of migrant workers is rising, it has become harder and harder for many middle-aged and older workers to find jobs, according to Jenny Chan, a sociologist at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, who has been doing field research among migrant workers in Beijing, Shenzhen and other Chinese cities.
Older workers, especially if they have reached the cut-off age of 45, are often deemed unsuitable for assembly lines, which require speed and precision, and are often physically taxing. “What is left for them is basically the more informal work, where they are not even recognized as employees,” says Chan. “They become what we call gig workers, who are more vulnerable because they do not have accident insurance, proper social security, pensions or other benefits.”
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