Cost of labor in China and in EU: a comparison of the last 15 years

Abstract

This project aims to analyze how the cost of labor in China and in the European Union has grown from 2003 to 2018. After collecting the data, the changes or improvement of remuneration policies in both China and the EU will be considered to demonstrate whether they have affected the growth of labor cost. In this work, the local differences between Chinese provinces and regions regarding the cost of labor will be also taken into account, in order to figure out whether China is still a competitive country in terms of cost of labor and, if so, how it differs from one province to another. The Chinese situation will be then compared to European Union's. To achieve the aim of this thesis project, a preliminary collection of data will be acquired from the "China Statistical Yearbook", compiled by "National Bureau of Statistics", the "CEIC China Premium Database", a Chinese-English database of information on economics that goes back to the 1949, as well as from the Eurostat Database, for what concerns labor cost data of the European Union.