破解农村剩余劳动力之谜

The Myth of Surplus Labor Force in Rural China

在经历近30年的高速经济增长和成功的经济改革之后,坚持认为中国农村仍然有高比例、大规模的剩余劳动力的观点,已经成为缺乏经验证据的教条,且妨碍我们对劳动力市场形势做出正确的判断。文章采取直接观察农村劳动力加总数量、年龄结构和就业分布的方法,估算出目前农村只有不到1.2亿剩余劳动力,剩余比例是23.5%,其中一半超过40岁。这一结论的政策含义是,在劳动力出现短缺的新情况下,为了挖掘劳动力供给的潜力,应该加快户籍制度及其相关制度的改革,清除各种阻碍劳动力流动和人口迁移的制度性障碍。

After nearly three decades of phenomenal economic growth and successful reform,it is obviously lack of empirical evidence to believe that there are still a large amount and high proportion of surplus labor force in rural China.By directly examining aggregated magnitude,age structure and employment distribution of rural labor force,this paper concludes that there remain less than 120 million surplus laborers and that account for less than one fourth of total labor force in rural China.Moreover,about 50 percent of the surplus laborers are over forty years old.The policy implication is that under the circumstance of emerging labor shortage,the hukou system reform should be further accelerated in order to completely clear up institutional obstacles deterring labor mobility and population migration.