机器人如何重塑城市劳动力市场:移民工作任务的视角

How Robots Reshape the Urban Labor Market: From a Perspective of Migrants Job Tasks

机器人作为“制造业皇冠顶端的明珠”,是智能制造和产业转型升级的重要载体,近年来在城市工业生产体系得到广泛应用,不可避免会深刻影响城市劳动力市场供需格局。那么,机器人如何重塑城市劳动力市场?这一问题值得关注。本文试图以移民这一规模庞大且流动性强的劳工群体作为分析对象,从常规/非常规工作任务的视角进行考察,基于国际机器人联盟(IFR)数据和中国劳动力动态调查(CLDS,2012-2016年)的经验研究发现:机器人对就业的影响并非想象中的悲观。当城市机器人安装密度大时,移民有更大的概率进入该城市就业而不是被挤出劳动力市场,表明机器人的生产力效应相较替代效应占据主导力量,机器人所释放的生产力能够创造更多的工作岗位以吸纳移民涌入。此外,机器人与不同工作任务劳动者具有不同的替代弹性。相比于常规任务移民,机器人显著地促进非常规任务移民就业,表明非常规任务移民与机器人在城市空间里能够达成“人机共存”。机器人的影响存在个体异质性,那些从事常规任务的中年男性的低技能者更容易遭遇机器人的负面冲击。本文的政策启示在于:各地政府在致力于机器人技术驱动产业转型升级之同时,应推动新时期产业工人队伍建设,以更好地实现“技术升级”与“技能升级”的良好匹配关系。

Robots are the jewel in the crown of the manufacturing industry,which are important for intelligent production and industrial transformation.In recent years robots have been utilized in urban industrial systems,which unavoidably affect the urban labor market.Thus,a question naturally arises:how do robots reshape the urban labor market?From the perspective of routinization of job tasks,our study concentrates on migrants,a sizable labor force within the urban labor market,and provides relevant empirical evidence based on the data of industrial robots in the International Federation of Robotics(IFR)and the micro-level data from the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey(CLDS,2012-2016).The results show that,in contrast to the conventional permissive views,migrants have a higher probability of entering cities where there are wider and deeper adoptions of robots.Thus the productivity effect dominates the substitution effect,suggesting that productivity released by the adoption of robot creates more jobs which absorbs more migrants.In addition,substitution elasticities between robots and workers with different routine intensity of job tasks are not identical.Coexisting with robots in cities,migrant workers with non-routine tasks could enjoy more employment opportunities relative to migrant workers with routine tasks.And low-skilled middle-aged males are more vulnerable to shocks from robots.Local governments should attach great importance to the supply industrial workers in the new digital era for a higher quality of matches between technology upgrading and skill upgrading while promoting robot-driven industrial transformations.