Notes

In China, where city and provincial governments set minimum wage standards, a number of regions are moving to raise employee pay. Starting in April, the minimum wage for workers in Shanghai will rise to $293 per month (1,820 Chinese yuan), the highest in mainland China. And over the past several weeks, both Shandong Province in eastern China and the city of Shenzhen, a major manufacturing base just across from Hong Kong, have raised their minimum pay scales.

The state-run Xinhua News Agency says these wage hikes follow similar actions elsewhere in China, "where fewer new workers are entering the labor force," and local governments are dealing with labor shortages.

The Chinese economy, which has been rising steadily for decades, has in some ways become a victim of its own success. While hundreds of millions of Chinese have been lifted out of poverty since the 1980s, many more have been left behind economically.

At the same time, China's decades-old "one-child" policy, originally implemented out of concerns of a runaway population explosion, is also affecting its national labor force.

A raising of minimum wages also comes into play in China's newly announced urbanization plan, an ambitious campaign to move tens of millions of Chinese out of rural areas and into cities by 2020. And Chinese officials, Orlins says, are hoping urbanization will increase the country's GDP, as they look to shift China away from investment-led growth and more toward domestic consumption.