Standing on a street corner near Foxconn Technology Group's plant in central China that makes iPhone 5 handsets, employee Wang Ke says he'll quit if his wage doesn't double.

“I don't have high expectations, I know I'm a migrant worker,” said Wang, 22, who earned 1,600 yuan ($258) in December, after deductions for lodging. “But I want to make 3,500 yuan a month, net. That's a fair price.”

Wang's attitude springs from a labor-market squeeze across the country after China's pool of young workers shrank by almost 33 million in five years at the same time as industry added 30 million jobs. The resulting wage pressure means Foxconn, Apple Inc.'s biggest supplier, pays the same basic salary at the Zhengzhou plant it built in 2010 among the corn and peanut fields of Henan province, as it does in Shenzhen, the southern city that spawned the nation's industrial boom.