工业机器人与中国生产工人职业流动

Industrial Robots and Production Workers’ Occupational Mobility

“机器换人”背景下中国工业就业规模不断缩减,引起了社会的广泛担忧。本文基于职业流动视角,通过匹配中国劳动力调查数据和行业机器人应用数据进行实证分析,发现行业机器人渗透水平每增加1%,将平均提高生产工人1.2%的职业流动概率;结合垂直和水平流动考察生产工人职业变化,发现工业机器人应用促进了生产工人互补式流动而非替代式转移。以上研究结论在一系列稳健性检验、内生性处理下依然成立。异质性分析发现,在工业机器人应用影响下,高学历、健康和男性生产工人的互补式流动更加明显。本文研究结论在一定程度上回应了对技术性失业的担忧,在“机器换人”背景下促进生产工人职业互补式流动具有重要的意义。

The shrinking scale of industrial employment in the context of machine replacement raises widespread concern.Research on the issue of how humans can coexist with machines mostly aimed at not being replaced by machines rather than actively seeking pathways to achieve technological complementarity.Therefore,determining whether industrial robots and production workers are substitutes or complements requires a broader exploration from the perspective of occupational mobility,which is of great significance in promoting human-machine complementarity under the trend of intelligentization.This paper takes occupational mobility as a research perspective and conducts empirical research based on the 2014–2018 China Labor-force Dynamics Survey(CLDS)data.The findings reveal that for every 1%increase in the industrial robot penetration rate,the probability of occupational mobility for production workers increases by 1.2%on average,which supports previous conclusions.Moreover,after classifying vertical career advancement and horizontal occupational complementarity as complementary mobility and defining vertical career decline and horizontal occupational substitution as substitutive transfer,it indicates that the application of industrial robots can promote the former rather than the latter.Further heterogeneity analysis reveals that complementary mobility is more pronounced among high-skilled,healthy,and male production workers under industrial robot deployment.This paper makes the following contributions.Firstly,from the perspective of occupational mobility,it provides a broader definition of the human-robot complementarity and human-robot substitution relationships,offering theoretical supplements to existing research and addressing concerns about technological unemployment.Secondly,based on the objective of complementary mobility,the paper conducts a heterogeneous analysis from the perspective of fiscal expenditure,providing policy references for achieving human-robot complementarity under the trend of automation.Furthermore,this paper offers the following policy implications.Firstly,it is crucial to promote the development of industrial intelligence in China and reduce industrial production costs by leveraging robot technology,thereby facilitating the ascent of manufacturing value chains and achieving high-quality economic development.Secondly,efforts should be made to accelerate the household registration system reforms,remove barriers to labor mobility,and improve the efficiency of labor allocation in industries.Thirdly,it is essential to establish a platform for occupational mobility services for production workers and pay greater attention to the occupational mobility issues of women,in order to promote fuller and higher-quality employment.