It was still a week before the end of the Lunar New Year celebrations but thousands of rural workers, buckling under the combined weight of possessions and fears of job losses, were already streaming out of Shanghai Railway Station.

Many had spent the past two or more days traveling from their homes in the rural interior.

Liu Yongmin, a migrant worker from Fuyang, Anhui Province, said he simply could not afford to wait any longer.

"I want to be back as soon as possible; otherwise I may lose my job with so many people returning," he said.

He added "a far greater number of people" were waiting in his hometown for trains to coastal cities than in previous years.

Figures from Shanghai Railway Station showed that large numbers of migrant workers began returning to major labor-export areas near Shanghai last Saturday.

About 70,000 passengers, many of them migrant workers, left Fuyang in a single day.

Chen Xiwen, deputy director of the Office of Central Financial Work Leading Group, said on Monday in Beijing that the number of jobless migrant workers was estimated at 20 million, 15.3 percent of the 130-million total, based on an earlier survey by the Ministry of Agriculture.

Liu, 46, used to work at a store selling screws in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province.

Last month, however, he returned to his hometown in Fuyang two weeks earlier than in previous years because "business was slack" and his boss had told him to "go back and enjoy himself".

He attributed the extra leave to the ongoing "economic slump", which also cost him the entire New Year benefit package - an annual bonus totaling 2,000 yuan, a free train ticket and a one-off payment of 200 yuan parceled out by his boss for food during the trip.

Making matters worse, he stands to lose the job he has held for the past three years.

"He (the boss) did not tell me when to come back. I waited for his call, but it never came," Liu said while waiting for the train to Wenzhou at the lobby of Shanghai train station.

Liu's wife also boarded a Beijing-bound train the same day because the couple, as Liu recalled, "promised each other to find a new job as soon as possible".

"The early bird catches the worm - we may still have the chance," Liu enthused.

Forty-two-year old Chang Youchun and his wife, Deng Shufang, were just as uncertain about their futures.

The couple from Mianyang, Sichuan Province, were also heading for Wenzhou.

Although they still held their jobs at a local transportation company and a mirror-manufacturing factory, their salaries had dropped since October last year.

"Factories around us are shedding staff and closing down," said Chang. "We just hope we won't be the next victims."

(China Daily February 4, 2009)