Hua Xin, deputy head of the Shanghai Home Service Industry Association, confirmed the trend in elder care services in an interview with Laodong Daily, a newspaper in Shanghai, and said the number of temporary job vacancies had risen before Spring Festival this year.

Hua said that in Shanghai's Minhang district, for example, up to 20 percent of vacancies looking for people to provide home care for the elderly during the holiday had not been filled.

Guo Jiqiang, a professor at the School of Economics at Zhejiang University, attributed the seasonal labor shortage to a range of factors.

"On the one hand, people's career choices do not match the market demand," he said.

Guo said young people were opting for jobs with less regulation and fewer restrictions, and preferred to deliver packages rather than take up repetitive and monotonous factory jobs.