(Yicai Global) July 22 -- Nearly one fifth of China’s working population is employed in the manufacturing sector, and the provinces with the biggest proportion of their workforce in manufacturing are all located along the country’s economically developed eastern coast, according to the latest data.

Some 18.1 percent of China’s working population are engaged in manufacturing, just behind the agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishing sector at 20.6 percent, according to the National Bureau of Statistics’ recent yearbook on the 2020 population census. The wholesale and retail sector ranked third with 14.1 percent and the construction industry fourth with 11.3 percent.

Southeastern Zhejiang province boasts the biggest proportion of its workforce in the manufacturing sector at 38.2 percent, followed closely by Guangdong, the province with the biggest economy, at 34 percent, the yearbook said. Jiangsu and Fujian provinces came third and fourth and Shanghai ranked fifth. All five provincial-level regions are located along the eastern coast.

Manufacturing and processing are the main pillars of the economy in China’s eastern coastal regions and these resource-intensive industries need a bigger labor force, Peng Peng, executive president of the Guangdong Institutional Reform Research Association, told Yicai Global.

Of those engaged in manufacturing, most are employed in the garment and electronics sectors. Some 1.84 percent of the country’s working population work in the former and 1.83 percent in the latter.

Only a small proportion of the employed work in high-paying sectors. Just 1.7 percent of the total workforce have jobs in the information technology, software and telecoms service sector, 1.5 percent in the financial sector and 1.3 percent in scientific research, the yearbook said.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Kim Taylor