中国就业系统的演进、摩擦与转型——劳动力市场微观实证与体制分析

The Evolution, Friction and Transformation of China’s Employment System: Micro Empirical and Institutional Analysis of the Labor Market

居于国民经济核心地位的就业系统的形成、演进和调整,与经济发展阶段和结构条件变化密切相关。受到经济追赶所必须的高强度资本积累的制约,中低层次人力资本主导的中国就业系统,源于城乡二元分割制度且被低价工业化模式强化。面对高质量发展要求和城市化转型,中国的这种工业化就业系统呈现出越来越大的不适应性,主要表现在大量劳动力漂移于低端部门,低端锁定现象明显。理论和经验分析结果表明,劳动力就业漂移将会对人力资本积累产生明显的负反馈效应,特别是高人力资本劳动力和成熟劳动力群体表现尤甚。本文的基本结论是,形成于大规模工业化时期边疆开拓式发展环境下的维持型就业系统,在向城市化和高质量转型中导致大量劳动力就业漂移,人力资本在漂移中不断耗散,形成中国向高质量增长阶段跨越的极大障碍。在中国发展逐步触及创新与福利这些最本质的现代化理念时,就业的制度组织应从维持型就业系统转型并逐步建立有利于人力资本持续积累激励的分享型就业系统。

Summary:The formation,evolution and adjustment of employment systems are the core of a national economy,and are closely related to stages of economic development and changes in structural conditions.Influenced by the high intensity capital accumulation and dual division system of urban and rural areas,China s employment system has been dominated by medium and low level human capital as it has adapted to the requirements of industrialization.However,the employment system developed during China s industrialization is increasingly unsuited to today s transition to urbanization.As increasingly more members of the labor force drift in the low-end market and channels to raise them to the next level are blocked,there is a negative feedback effect on human capital accumulation.We first use several stylized facts to illustrate an employment system formed in the process of industrialization and the problems encountered in the transition to urbanization.First,the initial conditions of industrialization and the path dependence of economic duality have led to a contradiction in China s labor market:low levels of human capital redundancy and high levels of human capital shortage.The lag in human capital upgrading constitutes the main barrier to the high-quality development of urbanization.Second,the stability of employment for people with medium and low education depends on the“frontier expansion”of employment opportunities caused by large-scale industrialization.Once the employment creation opportunities disappear,these laborers drift in low-end jobs and the accumulation of human capital is interrupted.Third,the path dependence of the industrialization accumulation mode on low human capital and labor market segmentation means that the majority of the agricultural transfer labor force is locked into low-end sector employment.The inadaptability of this employment system leads to a large number of people drifting in the low-end sector with no available upward mobility channels.The lag in the upgrading of human capital creates a negative feedback mechanism in the employment system.In particular,in the relationship between employment systems and economic efficiency(or income),the causal accumulation of their interactions leads to the dissipation of human capital.We add the impact of employment drift into an extended job search model to analyze the problem theoretically,and find that an increase in employment drift causes a decline in average wages.This effect locks more and more workers into low and middle income groups,and makes rising into the high income group relatively difficult.We then use the China Household Income Project 2013 survey data to analyze the relationship between employment drift and income growth among young adults.Overall,we find that employment drift has a significant negative effect on income growth,and has a more significant impact on high human capital workers and mature workers(31-39 years old).The problem of employment drift in China s labor market is not an accidental phenomenon,but is part of the process of service sector transformation.The maintenance employment system that is part of the large-scale industrialization stage of economic development is obviously not suitable for the differentiated and innovative development requirements in the period of urbanization.A core component of China s economic transformation is the transformation from a maintenance employment system to a sharing employment system.To achieve this,it is necessary to expand our theoretical understanding of the following:(1)how to construct a human capital system that adapts to innovative developments in the urbanization period;(2)how the knowledge middle class is shaped;(3)how the maintenance employment system is squeezed by high intensity accumulation and production differentiation,which further intensifies the drift;(4)prospects and institutional implications of the dual human capital accumulation system;and(5)the importance of employment system construction,as the present design is related to the future reality.Of course,as adjusting the employment system involves many aspects of different economic and social policies,a plan for building an employment system suitable for China s urbanization needs more in-depth discussion and research.