http://j.people.com.cn/n3/2024/0904/c94476-20214225.html
New energy vehicles are now one of China’s “new big three” exports (electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and solar cells).
BYD, a major electric vehicle manufacturer in Zhengzhou, Henan, China, recently launched its second large-scale recruitment for 2024 at its Zhengzhou site. According to the job description, 4,000 people are being recruited this time, with monthly salaries ranging from 5,000 to 9,000 yuan (1 yuan = about 12 €cent).
Among them, the biggest labor shortage is in production site operators, whose work involves simple product assembly using auxiliary equipment. As for salaries, general site operators earn about 7,000 yuan, while positions that require certain skills, such as forklift and finishing workers, can earn up to 10,000 yuan.
The rapidly developing new energy vehicle industry is creating a large number of jobs. According to the “Manufacturing Industry Talent Development Plan Guide” published by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the number of talents in the energy-saving and new energy vehicle field was 170,000 in 2015, but will expand to 1.2 million in 2025. The number of job offers for general workers and technicians in the new energy vehicle industry increased by 91.2% from January to July of this year compared to the same period last year. It is expected that there will be a shortage of 1.03 million talents in 2025.
BYD’s Zhengzhou base project is divided into three phases, with the first phase planned to produce 400,000 vehicles. Phases one and two have already started production, and phase three is currently under construction. The Zhengzhou base employs 36,000 workers, and when the production line is fully operational, 50,000 workers will be needed, with a ratio of operators to technicians on-site of about one to one.
Other automakers are in a similar situation. On August 21, GAC Aion’s Changsha Smart Eco Factory in Changsha, Hunan Province, was completed and began production. Annual production is expected to reach 200,000 units. In June, Farasis Energy’s Guangzhou facility in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, began production, and when it reaches its planned production volume in 2025, it will be able to provide 600,000 EV batteries. At the end of last year, a battery pack factory with its own capital from Germany’s Volkswagen Group began production in Hefei, Anhui Province. All these factories require a significant number of workers.
China’s new energy vehicle industry had a compound annual growth rate of 82.1% in sales volume from 2012 to 2023, and has been the world’s largest in both production volume and sales volume for nine consecutive years. In the first half of this year, production volume increased 30.1% year-on-year to 4.929 million units, and sales volume increased 32% to 4.944 million units.