operations at the very least.ii Our migrant category specifically excludes commuters who
are also employed outside of the village, but who live at home. Out-commuters, referred
to in many areas as those who “leave in the morning and return in the evening” (zaochu
wangui), are not considered migrants by villagers and leaders, so separating the two
categories facilitated data collection. The self-employed category includes all those who
work for themselves as “petty capitalists” (getihu), most frequently operating in transport,
trade, or handicraft production. Local wage earners (zai bencun na gongzi de) work
either in village or private firms. In addition to estimating the total number of each type
of laborer, leaders broke down labor participation by gender, and approximated the
proportion within each gender group who belonged to different age, education, job-type,
and ownership sub-categories and the average wage earned by each group.iii
Leaders also were asked to estimate the number of workers coming into the
village for work (in-commuters and in-migrants), the characteristics of these workers and
their wages. Since the survey only covers rural villages, and nearly all workers coming
into these villages are from other rural areas, the incoming workforce can be designated
rural-to-rural labor movement.iv To the extent that this sample is nationally
representative, we can net out the workers coming into the villages from those leaving the
villages to compare the rural-to-rural segment of rural labor movement to those who are
not moving into villages (and work in either townships or cities) which we call rural-to-
urban.
Finally, the survey includes questions about the types of employers in the village.
Leaders were asked to identify whether workers were employed by private or collective
enterprises. The category, private enterprise, mainly includes the firms designated as