“China's factories reopen, only to fire workers as virus shreds global trade”, 26 March 2020

… Early in the outbreak, China imposed tough travel restrictions and factory suspensions to curb the spread of the virus, squeezing labor supplies and sending exporters scrambling to fulfill orders.

Now, the reverse is happening - overseas orders are being scrapped as the pandemic ravages the economies of China’s trading partners…

Shi [a Chinese factory owner] said he would slow production and might suspend all output soon if business does not improve.

He also told the 50-odd workers who have yet to return from Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak in China, to find jobs elsewhere…

… state-owned Securities Times reported Good Will Watch Case Manufacturing, a supplier to the U.S. watch brand Fossil (FOSL.O), would put its more than 600 workers on leave for at least three months…

… China’s urban jobless rate hit 6.2% in February, up one percentage point from the end of 2019, and a record since the statistics bureau started publishing the data in early 2018.

Dan Wang, an analyst with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), said the jobless rate could go up by another 5 percentage points this year, which corresponds to an additional 22 million in urban unemployment, on top of an estimated 5 million jobs lost in January-February…

A 23-year-old salesman at a mirror factory in Yiwu in Zhejiang province said U.S. clients canceled over $500,000 of orders on Saturday alone.

Some of the factory’s more than 1,000 workers have since been suspended while others are given more days off per week, the salesman said, declining to be named.

“I think the company will start to lay off people soon,” he said.