(Yicai Global) Oct. 15 -- China’s home services market, which includes nannies and cleaners, lacks over 20 million workers, mainly due to the stigma associated with such work, the Ministry of Commerce said in a recent forecast.

China’s home services market, estimated to be worth almost CNY1.1 trillion (USD153.4 billion) this year, is struggling to find enough workers, the ministry said. 

The number of households hiring home help in 2020 tripled in the 10 years from 2010 to 49.8 million, according to statistics.

And this number is only expected to increase with the growing middle class, better lifestyle expectations, bigger families as the government encourages more children and a rapidly aging demographic. The number of people aged 60 and above in China is expected to account for almost a third of the population by 2035.

More efforts need to be made to improve the image of household workers, formulate industry standards, provide better training and so on in order to fill the gap, Wang Peng, associate professor at Beijing Academy of Social Science, told Yicai Global. 

Over 90 percent of the students in our home service major class were transferred here because they could not get into other majors, and not because they have chosen this profession, a home services teacher surnamed Kong at a vocational high school in eastern Jiangxi province told Yicai Global last month.

Many of the students think that after graduating they will have to find work as a nanny and they will be looked down on by their friends and family, Kong said. A lot of them want to change major, he added.

But due to the strong demand, household workers in Shenzhen are actually well paid, especially those taking care of infants and their mothers. It is cheaper for a family to hire in-home care at between CNY10,000 (USD1,400) and CNY30,000 a month, whereas it could cost up to CNY100,000 (USD14,000) a month in a postpartum care center.

There are no service standards for household workers and many of them have no qualifications, said Zhu Zhiqiang, general manager of Shenzhen Yi Lan De Zhong Occupational Training School. 

The Chinese government has rolled out a series of policies to boost vocational training in the home service sector since 2019. As of mid-2020, 122 vocational and junior colleges offered 125 majors in home services and management, according to incomplete statistics. But as of the first half, only 1,344 students were enrolled in these majors, meaning fewer than 20 students per school on average.

Editors: Shi Yi, Kim Taylor