“慢就业”的职业损失:工资收入和工作职位

Occupational Loss of “Slow Employment”:Wage and Job Position

“慢就业”是毕业生为了找到合适工作而主动选择暂不就业的状态,普遍被视为高质量就业的具体表现,而其职业损失常常被忽略。这容易夸大“慢就业”对毕业生就业的促进作用,忽略了很多毕业生选择消极“慢就业”以及“慢就业”对毕业生就业能力的抑制作用,从而有可能使“慢就业”成为毕业生高质量就业的阻碍。文章从工资收入和工作职位两个方面,考察了“慢就业”对毕业生就业的负面影响,结果显示:“慢就业”显著降低了毕业生的工资收入和工作职位。进一步机制分析表明,受限于较低的就业意愿,很多毕业生选择消极“慢就业”,很难借此提高需求与供给匹配程度;同时,“慢就业”所产生的“职业空档期”导致毕业生就业能力下降,也阻碍了其实现要求与能力的匹配;而且,两项匹配都存在滞后效应,会抑制毕业生的长期职业发展。据此,文章认为可以从加强毕业生就业服务、发展“间隔年”项目以及建立终身学习制度等方面促进各级各类毕业生及时和高质量就业。

“Slow employment” is a state in which graduates voluntarily choose not to be employed temporarily in order to find suitable jobs. It is generally regarded as a concrete manifestation of high-quality employment. However, its occupational loss is often ignored. This tends to exaggerate the positive role of“slow employment” on graduate employment, and relatively ignore the negative “slow employment” of many graduates and the inhibitory effect of “slow employment” on graduate employability, which may make“slow employment” an obstacle to the high-quality employment of graduates.This paper studies the impact of “slow employment” on the employment status of graduates, and makes the following contributions: First, different from a large number of literatures that mainly analyze the promoting effect of “slow employment” on graduate employment, it demonstrates the occupational loss caused by“slow employment” from the two aspects of wage and job position. Second, according to the job search theory, human capital accumulation theory and individual-environment matching theory, it discusses how “slow employment” affects graduate employment, and theoretically and logically reveals the occupational loss of“slow employment”. Third, it adopts the instrumental variable method, Hausman-Taylor estimation and PSM analysis to resolve the issues of endogeneity and sample selection bias, which provides reliable empirical evidence for the occupational loss caused by “slow employment”.The results show that “slow employment” hinders the high-quality employment of graduates and significantly reduces the wage level and job positions of graduates. Further mechanism analysis shows that many graduates have low employment willingness, and the negative “slow employment” based on this reduces the degree of demand-supply matching in employment for graduates. At the same time, the “career gap” created by “slow employment” hinders graduates from accumulating applicable vocational skills, which will lead to the depreciation of knowledge acquired by graduates in school, and reduce the degree of their requirementability matching. Moreover, the hysteretic nature of “slow employment” limits the long-term career development of graduates, inducing wage level growth and job advancement.Therefore, promoting the timely employment and high-quality employment of graduates of all levels and types requires that: First, schools should strengthen employment services for graduates and improve their employability and willingness to work. Second, the government should develop a high-quality “gap year” plan to increase the non-cognitive ability of graduates. Third, the whole society should establish a lifelong learning system to help the long-term career development of graduates.