Recently, Director of CIER, Professor Zeng Xiangquan was interviewed by Economic Daily, answering recent puzzling questions of Chinese labor market and employment. Here is the interview record.
【Labor Market Part】
(How to understand both strong supply and strong demand of labor in central and western regions in the first quarter? )
Zeng: Economy is facing a transitional trend of developing central and western regions. The reasons are as follow. On the one hand, the rising cost of land and logistics has made some eastern areas losing advantages on resources and encouraged investment on central and western regions. On the other hand, central and western regions has kept relative high economic growth rate, the trend of high GDP in western area and low GDP in eastern area is significant. The improved quality of economic growth can also push employment.
As can be seen from current situation, to further adjust regional employment structure, employment environment in central and western regions need to be improved and comprehensive development on education, medical service and culture need to be achieved, which can facilitate employment and talent attraction.
(How to view the pain causing by closing down outdated production facilities? )
Zeng: Under the background of reducing number of youth labor, aging of population and rising labor cost on companies, problems that may be brought by “middle-income trap” need close attention. In the long run, the linkage mechanism between employment and economy need to be focused.
In the short run, the transformation of technology structure will eliminate labor in outdated departmenta and cause negative effect on employment. But viewed in long run, technology improvement will trigger demand of new products, which will contribute to forming sustainable and effective industry developing mechanism, creating new industry categories and positions, accelerating evolution of industry structure, and especially benefiting the development of tertiary industry, which is labor-intensive, in a way of creating “economy of scale” in employment.
The employment challenge of Chinese labor market also comes from other objectives, such as those related to environment protection, ecology and low-carbon. Since environmental pressure will influence economic growth rate, some industry need to be shut down, and it will cause employment pressure. In the long run, the direction of new positions needs to be studied and labor quality need to be improved accordingly. It is necessary to transfer positions from traditional industries to emerging and green industries.
【About Structural Contradiction in Employment】
Zeng: Structural contradiction in employment is normal worldwide. However, what makes the contradiction in graduate employment in China serious is that it is not improved continuously. On the one hand, companies cannot find employees. On the other hand, it is hard for graduates to find a job. Also, some laborers are facing reduced salary, while companies are facing rising labor cost. These are all manifestations of serious structural contradictions, which have already been in strategic concern and become the major employment problem. The major problem facing the labor market is the mismatching of supply and demand. Because of adjustment of industry structure and transformation and upgrading of products, labor demand of the market changes rapidly. However, changes of labor supply remains slow and falls behind market, which indicates the necessity of transformation of education system,
There is no appropriate solution to graduate employment contradiction. In the short run, governments can attract college graduates to rural positions by using preferential policy. In the long run, market mechanism need to be established and transformation need to be implemented to raise the speed and ability of responding to market changes of universities and colleges. Therefore, universities and colleges need to set up new governance structure and practice de-administration strictly. By implementing autonomy and survival of the fittest, the quality of education can be expected to improve.
College students are in high demand of career guidance and experts in this field are needed. Currently, career guiding courses in most universities and colleges are not professional enough. It is suggested that country set up master's degree on career guidance as early as possible and cultivate relevant talents to accommodate market changes. |
China Institute for Employment Research. All rights reserved.