This NYT article puts the number of workers in Shenzhen at 420,000, the highest number I’ve heard so far.

The company said Friday that it had decided to give up its “college campus style” dormitory system in Shenzhen in the hopes that outside management companies could better integrate its workers into the local community and relieve some of the pressures of factory life.

“Providing employees with basic necessities including a safe and convenient place to live at the work site might have been sufficient in the past,” Terry Cheng, an executive vice president, said in a statement Friday. “But this arrangement no longer satisfies the needs of the young migrant workers of today.”

The decision is a sharp turnabout for Foxconn, which about five years ago opened a huge campus in Shenzhen with high-rise dormitories, restaurants, banks and recreational facilities.

Foxconn had a number of suicides among workers in recent months, mostly by young workers jumping from the high rise dormitories.