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Li Gang (pseudonym), a 29-year-old sales manager, plans to terminate his five-year working experience in Shanghai and look for a job in Kunshan, a neighboring city in Jiangsu Province, where he can reunite with his girlfriend and purchase a flat which is more affordable than one in Shanghai.

Amid the third job hunting fair held in Jiangsu Province on May 28, many people showed their willingness to move to the second-or-third-tier cities even though it may lead to a reduction of their salaries.

Xu, another job hunter in the fair, said he is considering returning to his hometown in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, to take care of his family and stay away from the skyrocketing housing prices in the real-estate market in Shenzhen.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, despite the diminishing growth rate of housing prices in Shanghai in April, compared with that in March, the growth of prices remain robust, up around 28 percent year on year. Meanwhile, the prices in Shenzhen saw an annual growth of 42.4 percent.

Last year, the number of permanent residents in Shanghai had for the first time during 15 consecutive years dropped by 1.5 percent to about 9.8 million, which was officially explained as a result of the current industrial restructuring that had driven away a certain number of blue-collar technicians.

The media predicted that, with the rapid rise of housing prices, the tendency to leave big cities will continue as white-collar workers are living with mounting pressure.

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