Chinese Worker Shortage is a Double Slap in the Face to Struggling American Job Seekers

COMMENTARY | In China, urban and rural locales of the country are experiencing shortages of workers even as the United States continues to struggle with high unemployment and underemployment. To illustrate just how much of "a tale of two countries" is taking place, one maker of shoes in China recently needed to fill 8,000 jobs, but were short some 7,000 workers. This past weekend, a broadcast of "Al Jazeera D.C. Bureau" showed workers at one Chinese work site automatically given a job just for showing up because of the desperate need for warm bodies to get the work done.

Contrast this with the United States, where, for example, a job opening in Florida saw 700-plus applicants for the position. Yet adding insult to injury to those in this country who are struggling to make ends meet, especially the underemployed and unemployed, is that this job shortage across the Pacific Ocean is causing something else to happen. For combined with the rising costs of industrial and agricultural-related materials like land and fuel, plus added with even more competitive wages and benefits for Chinese workers because it's a job seekers' market there, well, it tallies up to another blow to virtually all Americans who consume Chinese-made goods. That is, the price of those exported goods we buy in the good ol' USA is getting more expensive. Been to Walmart or your favorite supermarket lately?

In 2010, a big issue for the voters was jobs and their disappearance from here to cheaper labor markets like China. Yet how much more frustrated would American voters here have gotten if they were consciously aware en masse that China taking American jobs for itself still doesn't fill its workforce belly?

So the rhetorical question of the day comes to mind -- Which is easier: Americans trying to find an adequately-paying job that will put food on the table and keep the roofs over their heads in their own country, or somehow getting the chance to relocate to China and finding golden opportunity there just like the fleeing American corporations have?