The most prominent issue regarding employment pressure is the immense excess labor force in rural areas. By statistics, agricultural excess laborers accounted for about 140 million in 1988. As the rural populations increase while the scale of planted land decrease, conversion from rural excess labor force to the non-agricultural labor is considered to be the fundamental objective in realizing industrialization and urbanization in China.
Results of the fourth population census showed that the total population of the three northeast provinces in 1990 to be 99,336,0001) including 64,333,000 of the population of productive age, which comprised 64.8% of the total population. Of this working-age population, the employed workforce was 52,696,000 or 81.9%.
According to the statistics, it is clear that the proportion of the productive age group to the total population of the three northeast provinces in 1990, 64.8%, is higher than that of the country as a whole, which was 60%. With regard to the increase in the productive-age population of the three provinces (See Table 1), up to 1964, the growth of the total population was more remarkable, whereas since 1964 the speed of increase in the productive- age population has substantially exceeded that of the total population. This is because the second-generation baby-boomers born in the 1950s and 1960s are now part of the productive-age population.
Meanwhile, due to the implementation of the planned childbirth policy since the 1970s, the birth rate has decreased considerably, and as a result, the total population growth rate greatly declined in 1990.
The age structure of the productive-age population in the three northeast provinces represents a remarkable increase in the proportion of young population (See Table 2).
Table 2, which is the result of the fourth population census held in 1990, implies that more than 80% of the productive-age population in the three provinces are in their youth or prime, implying ample labor resources.
Table 3 shows the industrial structure of the employed workforce in the three northeast provinces in 1990.
