By Zhuo Xian, Research Department of Development Strategy and Regional Economy, DRC & Huang Jin, School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University

Research Report, No.69, 2019 (Total 5569) 2019-5-10

Abstract: In China, the labor-intensive services have played a leading role in the employment market, while manufacturing industry has seen a net outflow of workers. During the four years from 2014 to 2017, China’s manufacturing industry witnessed a loss of more than two million jobs yearly. According to the calculation of this paper, the loss of manufacturing jobs in China is mainly due to three factors, namely, increased efficiency, deeper division of labor and cross-border transfer, all of which are in conformability with the law of modern economic development. But it needs to be noted that the peak proportion of employment of China’s manufacturing industry began to decline when the per capita income was relatively low and the maximum share of manufacturing employment was more than 10 percentage points lower than the average level of developed countries. Meanwhile, uncertainties in the growth of labor-intensive services and low competitiveness of service trade have both made it become more difficult to maintain the current employment growth model. To ensure the sound employment in manufacturing industry is an important way to keep stable social employment across the board. We could address the issue of employment in the central and western regions by fully realizing industrialization, upgrading traditional manufacturing industry through the reform of business intelligent management and enhancing employment capacity of manufacturing industry by way of cooperation between businesses and colleges.

Key words: manufacturing industry, employment, de-industrialization