Study On Rural-Urban Migrant Workers' Willingness To Participate In Skills Training

A huge number of surplus labor forces exist in rural China. The transfer of those labor may lead them to better income, well developed country, and the settlement of issues concerning agriculture, countryside and farmers (San Nong). Nowadays, a huge floating population of rural-urban migrants is transforming the urban labor force. However, due to the education promotion orientation of fundamental education in rural China, most migrant workers have no training of professional skills, and the unsettled nature of the floating population has been in some way attributed to the hindrance caused by their lack of skills required by the industrialization and modernization. 2004 The Report of Chinese Peasants' Quality indicates that, in 2001, only 18.6% of the transferred migrants have taken professional skill training; up to 2003, less than 15% of rural-urban migrants have been trained. Another survey showed that, in 2004, 28.2% of the rural-urban migrant labors have certain kinds of skills. Meanwhile, in the forth quarter of 2005, the demand of professionals in all levels exceeds their supply, according to the bulletin about urban labor market demand published by Ministry of Labor and Social Security. PRC. So, by developing the professional skills training aiming at rural-urban migrant workers, high rate of their employment, decent salary, and long term settlement can be achieved effectively. Whereas the rate of skill training participation is relatively low. So, this paper is to focus on the skills training for migrant workers. We try to find out an effective way to promote the skill training participation, and living of migrants.In order to achieve the above goals, the awareness, attitude, judgment towards training, as well as the determinants of migrant workers' willingness on skills training participation are analyzed in this study. Influencing factors are drawn from a theoretical model, and followed by an empirical model. The data used in this study is from our primary questionnaire survey of migrant workers in Nanjing, in July-August 2006. According to the specific feature of objects under model observation, the model is estimated by PROBIT for the willingness of training participation. The research results indicate that rural-urban migrant workers have developed a certain awareness of professional skills training, relatively shallow however. Although the willingness of training participation is strong, the judgment on the effect of training is not very positive. Gap exists between what the workers need and the reality. Our research also indicates that, the level of education, household wealth and income, the predicted time lasting of the training, the predicted salary after training, as well as the availability of training program will play very important roles in influencing the workers' willingness of training participation. Finally, according to the conclusions above, several suggestions are proposed on how to improve the skills training participation of rural-urban migrant workers.