GUANGZHOU, China – Just a year after laying off millions of factory workers, China is facing an increasingly acute labor shortage. As American workers struggle with near double-digit unemployment, unskilled factory workers here in China’s industrial heartland are being offered signing bonuses. Factory wages have risen as much as 20 percent in recent months. Telemarketers are turning away potential customers because recruiters have fully booked them to cold-call people and offer them jobs. Some manufacturers, already weeks behind schedule because they can’t find enough workers, are closing down production lines and considering raising prices. Such increases would most likely drive up the prices American consumers pay for all sorts of Chinese-made goods. Rising wages could also lead to greater inflation in China. In the past, inflation has sown social unrest. The immediate cause of the shortage is that millions of migrant workers who traveled home for the long lunar New Year earlier this month are not returning to the coast. Thanks to a half-trillion-dollar government stimulus program, jobs are being created in the interior. But many economists say the recent global downturn also obscured a longer-term trend: China has drained its once vast […]