The labor shortage that began haunting China's coastal cities last year has spread to China's underdeveloped western regions.

Ye Weiqing, deputy manager at a hotel in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, said his hotel has raised wages twice over the last year but still has difficulty finding enough employees.

The Shahu Hotel in Ningxia's capital Yinchuan suffered a severe worker shortage after more than 130 waiters and waitresses resigned last year, Ye said.

The hotel needs about 300 employees to ensure normal operation, he said. "We provide food and lodging for free and buy medical insurance for all staff."

The hotel's managers are planning another pay rise that will bring the minimum salary to 1,100 yuan (US$164) per month for even inexperienced workers.

That wage is already close to what many small- and medium-sized businesses in China's coastal regions offer. In Yiwu, a manufacturing town in the developed Zhejiang Province, the minimum wage for migrant workers is 1,200 yuan a month, according to the local labor bureau.

Shahu Hotel is not the only employer trying to woo employees with higher wages and better compensation packages. Recruitment ads promising high wages are often stuck to store and restaurant windows on the streets of Yinchuan and other cities in the northwestern provinces of Gansu and Shaanxi.

"Everything is so expensive in the city that you cannot save much even if you salary is good," said Wei Ting, a waitress at a small restaurant in Yinchuan.

Wei makes 1,300 yuan a month but has to spend nearly 1,000 yuan on lodging, telephone bills and other daily expenses.

"Most of my friends have quit -- it's such a tiring and boring job. I'd quit, too, if I could get a better job."

Though college graduates have wait in long queues at job fairs just to submit a job application, demand for blue-collar workers seems insatiable.

Analysts say about 60 percent of the migrant workers from China's countryside expected to fill these blue-collar positions were born in the 1980s or 1990s, which is a cohort that expects more from their jobs.

"Migrant workers will no longer work long hours for meager pay," said Jiang Hongtao, a labor and social security official in Yinchuan's Xingqing District. "Perhaps their parents' generation worked to live. But these younger migrant workers want personal development. They will quit if their job fails to offer the opportunities for further self-development."

For years, migrant workers were the mainstay of the labor force in Chinese cities, particularly in the manufacturing bases of the Shanghai-centered Yangtze River Delta and the Guangzhou-centered Pearl River Delta.

At the beginning of the year, coastal businesses were busy hunting for laborers in the western regions, hoping the underdeveloped and populous provinces would supply workers.

Experts say the spread of the worker-shortage phenomenon to western China shows employers need to improve conditions for workers.

"A far-sighted employer will give his employees a sense of security by providing competitive pay and welfare package," said Chen Shida, a researcher on labor and social security issues in east China's Zhejiang Province. "Employees need to be respected and given adequate training to improve their skills."

The workers would then be more efficient, helping offset the rise in labor costs, he said.

(Xinhua News Agency October 26, 2010)