中国城市非正规就业的发展特征与城市化效应

在城市化过程中,大部分农村剩余劳动力并未进入城市正规部门,而进入非正规部门,但关于非正规就业对城市化的作用却不清楚.基于国际劳工组织提出的中国城市非正规就业估算方案,采用协整和误差修正模型测度与解释非正规就业对城市化的作用.自1990年以来,非正规就业已发展成为中国城市就业的主要方式和就业增长的主要来源,其空间分布总体上呈现自东部,中部到西部依次减少的特征,其在城市就业的比重与城市化水平的关系符合倒U形的规律.模型显示:尽管短期内非正规就业,正规就业和城市化之间存在波动关系,但长期看非正规就业对城市化具有显著的推动作用,非正规就业每增长1%,推动城市化水平提高0.1%.这种作用主要体现在非正规就业推动农村人口向城市地区的转移过程与劳动力在正规就业与非正规就业之间的流动过程.结论强调,中国城市化面临的挑战不仅是失业问题,而更多是如何应对处于社会保障系统以外的非正规就业问题.

The development of urban informal employment and its effect on urbanization in China

In the process of urbanization, a large number of rural labor forces do not enter urban formal sectors, but get employed in informal sectors. This fact leads to a neglect of the effect of urban informal employment on urbanization when we examine the relationship between urban employment and urbanization on the basis of normal statistical data. By using the co-integration test and error correction model, this paper explores the effects of urban informal employment on the urbanization measured by the proportion of urban population in total population. It develops an estimation method to measure urban informal employment in China based on the International Labor Organization's definition of informal employment. It is found that from 1990 to 2010 urban informal employment in China has grown to be a primary source of the growth of urban employment. In 2010, urban informal employment accounted for 50.7% of total urban employment. In particular, the unregistered employment as part of informal employment accounted for 32.8% of urban employment. Moreover, most of urban informal employment is geographically concentrated in provinces of eastern China. The models show that the relationship between informal employment, formal employment and urbanization is characterized with a stable equilibrium in the long term due to the existence of a regulatory mechanism within the urbanization system although this relationship is fluctuant in the short term. It is testified that the growth of urban informal employment contributes to the development of urbanization. That urban informal employment grows by 1% will contribute to an increase of urbanization rate by 0.1%. Informal employment should be considered as a condition of China's rapid urbanization in the post-reform era. It has been widely noted that a basic conflict of China's urbanization is the gap between the unlimited supply of rural labor forces and the limited ability of cities to absorb them. This paper suggests that informal employment should serve as a solution to this conflict. It is argued that the challenge to China's urbanization is not only from the problem of unemployment, but also from how to tackle urban informal employment outside the social welfare system. Dealing with the problem of the latter is also an important task of the global program called "decent work" which has been promoted by the International Labor Organization in the past decades.