China's rural migrant workers top 225 million

BEIJING, March 25 -- China, the world largest agriculture country in terms of farming population, has 225.42 million rural migrant workers as of 2008, according to statistic from the National Statistics Bureau (NBS) on Wednesday.

Among all the migrant workers, 62.3 percent or 140.41 million were working outside their home county, while the other 37.7 percent or, 85.01 million, worked in their hometowns.

Migrant workers from the central areas accounted for 37.6 percent of the 140.41 million ones. Other 32.7 percent and 29.7 percent were from the western and eastern regions, respectively.

The NBS said 70 million migrant workers went back to hometowns before February. Currently, 56 million have returned to the cities, 45 million have found jobs, and the other 11 million are still unemployed.

The statistics are based on a survey conducted by NBS, involving 68,000 rural households from 7,100 villages in 31 provinces.