数字技术、城市规模与零工工资——基于网络招聘大数据的实证分析

Digital Technology, City Size and Gig Wage: An Empirical Study based on Big Data of Online Recruitment

随着数字经济的兴起,基于互联网平台的零工就业模式成为稳就业的重要支撑。本研究检验零工就业从城市规模和数字技术应用中获得的工资溢价效应,通过将2020—2021年网络招聘平台上零工招聘大数据与城市统计年鉴数据匹配并进行实证检验,研究发现:城市规模对零工就业的工资具有正的溢出效应,但城市规模的零工工资溢价水平随着数字技术的应用水平而下降;进一步分析不同类型的零工就业工资溢价水平发现,高技能水平的零工就业者比低技能水平的零工就业者获得了更高的城市规模溢价,且城市规模产生的工资溢价效应仅作用于线下工作;对于完全可以线上完成的零工岗位,城市规模并未对其产生工资溢价效应。这意味着,对于线上完成的零工工作,数字技术的应用削弱了城市规模带来的集聚优势,扩大城市规模并非获得外部经济的唯一途径,数字技术给零工经济提供了后发优势。本文为加快城市数字基础设施建设,优化零工就业结构,促进包容性经济增长提供政策指导。

The gig economy relies on internet platforms for high-quality matching, as well as the skills of labor and online services.Gig workers not only benefit from sharing, matching and learning effects with the expansion of the city, but also gain benefits from the application of the Internet and modern information technology, such as improving matching efficiency, reducing transaction costs with customers and online learning costs.Therefore, this study examines the impact of urban size and digital technology on the level of gig wages.The empirical test was conducted by matching the odd job recruitment information on the online recruitment platform from 2020 to 2021 with the city statistical yearbook data.The results have shown that the wages of gig employment have a positive city-scale spillover effect.The wage premium of city-scale employment has declined with the application of Internet technology.The development and application of digital technology is conducive to improving the competitiveness of gig employment in small and medium-sized cities.Applying instrumental variable methods to deal with endogeneity, the conclusions are still robust.In addition, the city-scale spillover effect of gig employment wages presents heterogeneity with the difference in the skill level and whether tasks can be completed online.On the one hand, the wages of gig workers with high-skill increase with the size of the city higher than that of low-skilled workers.The reason is that the premium wages for gig jobs are mainly derived from the learning effect and matching effect of workers in big cities.The workers with high-skill have higher learning ability and matching ability, and can effectively utilize the externalities brought by big cities.On the other hand, the wage premium generated by the size of cities mainly affects offline work.For odd jobs that are easy to code and can be completed online, their wage income reflects the premium of the city size.For some traditional and offline jobs, the scale of the city can bring positive externalities.The marginal contribution of this research is as follows: First, from the perspective of the interaction between digital technology and city scale, this research uses gig employment as a new employment carrier under digital technology, and explores how digital technology affects the wage premium of city scale.The theory of the agglomeration effect of city size is mainly based on the economic externalities generated by population size, and the research on how the development of digital technology affects the wage premium of population size is rarely involved.Second, this research enriches quantitative research on new employment models.Gig employment will become the main form of employment in the context of the digital economy in the future, but there are still relatively few literatures focusing on gig employment as the research object.Only a few documents have studied the employment options of gig employment, and less attention is paid to the influencing factors of gig wages.For the first time, this research uses the wage data of gig employment on the online part-time job recruitment website to examine the impact of city size on the wage premium of gig employment.The policy implications of this study are twofold.First, compared with traditional employment, which mainly focuses on simple tasks with low added value, the gig economy in the digital age is becoming more and more important.Most of gig jobs turn to knowledge and skill-intensive tasks, and the externalities of highly skilled gig employment are bigger.Therefore, gig employment should not be regarded as a temporary solution to unemployment under external shocks, but as the future trend of the employment.Governments should improve the employment opportunities and quality of gig jobs from the perspective of platform supervision and social security.Second, the size of the city is not the only way to gain the externalities of urban economy, the application of digital technology can also enable gig workers to obtain wage premiums.From the perspective of policy makers, the development of digital technology could increase the supply of digital infrastructure in small and medium-sized cities.The government should improve regional Internet accessibility to take advantage of the external economic benefits brought by digital technology.