Job Satisfaction and Its Determinants among Chinese Rural-to-urban Migrant Workers

Abstract: Job satisfaction has been proved to be negatively correlated with labor mobility (Freeman, 1977). China faces a huge labor shortage and this problem worsens as migrant workers stay at their home provinces. This paper examines job satisfaction and its determinants among Chinese rural-urban migrant workers. This analysis is based on a number of previous theoretical and empirical studies. Data is used from the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) 2002 Rural-urban Migrant Household Survey. Migrant workers’ job satisfaction is proved to be much more sensitive to expected future income, and this paper ascertains the positive relations between expected future income and job satisfaction. Unlike previous studies, this paper finds that the greater the geographical distance is between a rural-urban migrant worker’ home province and current working province, the lower the migrant worker’ job satisfaction. However, the job satisfaction can be augmented if migrant workers have many friends in their working cities. Additionally, migrant workers’ job satisfaction is an inverted U-shaped curve in educational attainment. Being discriminated against by urban workers lowers migrant workers’ job satisfaction. This study carries some policy implications – softening institutional restrictions, enhancing the enforcement of the Labor Law, and emphasizing education in rural China – which may abbreviate the rift of the great labor shortage.