Growth and structural changes in employment in transition China

Fang Cai and Meiyan Wang

Journal of Comparative Economics, 2010, vol. 38, issue 1, 71-81

Abstract: By clarifying officially published statistics on labor market and employment and combining them with micro survey data, this paper tries to depict the employment growth and structural changes in rural and urban China and to break the myths believed by domestic and international scholars such as "zero growth of employment" and "unchangeable rural surplus labor pool". The paper provides exact statistics about China's labor market that previous studies fail to do, explaining how labor market develops, employment in both rural and urban areas increases and its structure diversifies, urban unemployment alleviates and number of rural surplus laborers reduces, as a result of economic growth, reform and opening-up. By examining demographic transition process in China, the paper also predicts the emerging trend of labor shortage, suggests a coming Lewisian turning point and reveals its policy implications to China's sustainable growth.

Keywords: Labor; market; development; Employment; growth; Surplus; labor; force; Lewisian; turning; point (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (82)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147-5967(09)00084-5
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:38:y:2010:i:1:p:71-81

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Comparative Economics is currently edited by D. Berkowitz and G. Roland

More articles in Journal of Comparative Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().