为什么“绿色工作”偏向成为非正式工作?——来自中国环保行业的经验

Why do‘green jobs’tend to be informal jobs?experiences from China’s environmental protection industry

“绿色工作”是发展绿色经济的重要组成部分,也是激活要素市场配置的前沿领域,然而在现实经济中却比较容易被忽视,社会上并没有出现在各经济部门中主动创造更多绿色工作就业机会的趋势。相关研究大多集中在对绿色工作数量的估算上,而较少地探讨绿色工作的深层次市场经济逻辑关系,以及绿色工作的“体面性”和“非正式工作”问题。文章选取在中国具有典型特征差异的六部门环保行业作为考察对象,利用2003—2018年的省级面板数据,使用可行广义最小二乘法对被考察行业的就业变化状况进行分析,随后进一步处理了内生性问题,并采用多种方法进行了稳健性检验。研究结果显示:尽管选取的产业部门间存在明显的特征差异,但是均可以支持同一个结论,即政府的绿色投入未能很好地改善绿色环保行业的就业水平,在一定程度上还会对多个绿色环保行业的就业人数造成负向影响,这使得绿色工作偏向成为非正式的工作;平均教育水平对多个行业的绿色工作数量有显著的正向影响,但多数绿色环保行业工作数量和平均教育水平呈现倒“U”型关系,随受教育程度的提高,具有高学历的人才一般不愿从事绿色工作,这不利于未来环保行业的高质量发展;绿色工作数量对薪资水平的弹性较为显著,薪资水平的提升会对多数绿色部门的工作数量产生明显的正向影响;失业率的上升会导致回收行业绿色工作机会减少。上述结论具有较强的政策含义:①仅仅加强对于环保行业的整体绿色投资是不够的,亟需在提升环保行业就业者待遇方面做出改善;②需要给予绿色工作更健全的社会保障,解决就业者流动过快的问题,尤其是能吸引与留住高端人才;③加强对于绿色工作的正面宣传,提升社会的认知水平和公众认同感;④采用政府引导与市场驱动相结合的办法,优先在城市层面做出科学规划。

‘Green jobs’are an important part of green economy development,and also the frontier field of activating factor market al⁃location.However,they are easy to be ignored in the real economy,and there is no tendency of actively creating green jobs in various economic sectors.Most of the related studies focus on estimating the number of green jobs,and rarely discuss the deep⁃seated market economy logic of green jobs,as well as the issue of‘decency’and‘informality’of green jobs.This paper selected six sectors of envi⁃ronmental protection industries with typical characteristic differences in China as the investigation objects,used the provincial panel data from 2003 to 2018,and utilized the feasible generalized least square method to analyze the employment changes of the investigat⁃ed industries.Subsequently,the endogeneity problem was further dealt with,and a variety of other methods were used to test the ro⁃bustness.The results showed that although there were obvious differences in the characteristics of the industrial sectors selected in this study,they could all support the same conclusion that the government’s green investment was not able to improve the employment lev⁃el of the green environmental protection industry;to a certain extent,it even had a negative impact on the employment of many green environmental protection industries,which made green jobs tend to be informal jobs.The average education level had a significant posi⁃tive impact on the number of green jobs in many industries,but the number of jobs and the average education level in most green envi⁃ronmental protection industries showed an inverted U⁃shaped relationship.With the improvement of education level,highly educated talents were generally reluctant to engage in green jobs,which was not conducive to the high⁃quality development of environmental pro⁃tection industries.The flexibility of the number of green jobs over the salary level was significant,and the increase of salary level had an obvious positive impact on the number of jobs in most green departments.Rising unemployment would lead to fewer green jobs in the recycling industry.The above conclusions have strong policy implications:①It is not enough to only strengthen the overall green in⁃vestment in the environmental protection industry,and it is urgent to improve the treatment of employees in the environmental protec⁃tion industry.②We need to provide better social security for green jobs and solve the problem of rapid job turnover,especially to at⁃tract and retain high⁃end talents.③We also need to strengthen positive publicity for green work,and improve social awareness and public recognition.④A combination of government guidance and market drive should be adopted to give priority to scientific planning at the city level.