Cross-Sector Job Shifts in Urban China’s Economic Reform Era (1978-2003): A Cohort Perspective

• In Event: 397 - Section on Labor and Labor Movements Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 06. Changing Employment Structures and the Impacts on Workers

Abstract

Based on occupational histories collected from a Chinese nationally representative sample (2003 Chinese General Social Survey), we examine variations in attainment of a state-sector first job and shifts from the state to nonstate sector job, across four cohorts who entered the labor market in distinct historical (and often tumultuous) periods from 1949 to 2003. We find more recent cohorts have increasingly higher odds of having a first job in a nonstate-sector work unit, as well as higher propensities to shift jobs from the state to the nonstate sector compared to early cohorts. Cohort variations are also reflected in the changing role of structural locations (gender, education, and fringe benefit receipt) in the prediction of first job sector and sector shifts across cohorts. For example, a high school degree offers the least advantage of entering the state sector for members of the Cultural Revolution cohort (labor market entry 1966-77), while the disincentive of sector shifting of fringe benefits offered by the state sector is weakened in the latest two reform cohorts (labor market entry 1978-91, and 1992-2003).

Authors

• Wen Fan, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

• Fangsheng Zhu, Harvard University