Labor economics and labor and human capital have always been important issues concerned by mainstream economics at home and abroad, including employment, population economy and human capital theory, which occupy an important position in the field of economic research. Labor economics has not only made great contributions to the development of economic theory, but also innovated its research methods because its research problems involve the most complicated economic phenomena, which promoted the continuous progress and perfection of economic research methods. Labor economics has a long history of development. In the western industrialized society, the focus on labor and employment is first of all the division of labor caused by industrialized production and unemployment caused by the imbalance of labor market operation. Therefore, the initial development of labor economics is based on the results of macroeconomic operation.

Labor economics is a branch of economics that studies the influencing factors of labor supply and labor demand in the labor market and their interaction. The research fields of labor economics include labor supply, labor demand, employment, wages, human capital investment, unemployment, income distribution and so on. Labor economics rose late in China, and there is a big gap between its research level and that of its international counterparts. There are few domestic units specializing in this subject, which cannot meet the needs of economic construction. With the social and economic transformation, China is facing an increasingly severe employment situation. Employment, unemployment and labor market development have become more and more important topics in economic life.

Under the condition of socialism, the research contents of China's labor economics are mainly:

(1) labor reproduction. Including simple reproduction and expanded reproduction of labor force.

(2) the supply and demand of labor. Including the population base of labor resources, labor structure, short-term and long-term balance of labor supply and demand.

③ Employment. Including the macroeconomic and social objectives of employment, the relationship between employment and labor productivity, the relationship between employment and wages, unemployment and its types, pre-employment training and post-employment training.

④ Macro-management of labor force. Including the rational flow of labor, labor market and its management, labor management system.

⑤ Micro-management of labor force. Including division of labor and cooperation, labor organization and staffing, labor quota and labor measurement, labor environment and human protection.

⑥ salary. Including factors affecting wages, wage functions, wage forms, wage levels, monetary wages and actual wages, minimum wages and maximum wages, and wage differences.

⑦ Economic problems in labor insurance. Including economic problems in social insurance such as illness, work injury and old-age retirement.

⑧ Labor efficiency. Including the factors affecting labor efficiency, ways to improve labor efficiency, micro-labor efficiency and macro-labor efficiency and their relationship.

However, some scholars believe that because labor economics is a specific economic science based on political economics, we should study the part directly related to labor in production relations, that is, labor relations in production relations. This labor relationship includes the combination of labor and means of production, division of labor and cooperation, and the distribution of personal consumer goods to workers.

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The first research result comes from a series of papers published by Becker, Lancaster and Mousse in 1960s. In particular, Becker's "time resource allocation theory" clearly recognizes that the family is the basic unit in the decision-making of labor supply behavior. He decomposed the related decision-making problems into two aspects, on the one hand, the decision of labor participation rate and working hours, on the other hand, the decision of household output and consumption. Becker summed up the three decisions of production, consumption and labor supply into a family model, which clearly explained how a family, under the control of utility maximization behavior, decided the time arrangement ratio of its members to engage in market-oriented activities and non-market-oriented activities, the combination of self-produced goods and purchased goods, and the division of work of different family members. Becker model is very influential in the study of labor supply, which has provided strong support for many theoretical explorations and empirical studies of labor supply since the 1960s. Becker's theoretical framework enables economic analysts to effectively apply it to the study of family behavior, such as the appropriate size of family members in marriage and divorce. A. Cigano discusses and expands the theoretical framework of Becker model from many aspects, and discusses the enlightenment and significance of this theoretical model on many issues such as time allocation and gender division of labor in multi-population families.

The second research achievement is human capital theory, which mainly studies the quality of labor force and other issues. It is true that the theory of human capital can be traced back to a long distance in the long river of economic history (Smith, 1776). However, it is the research of Miensen (1958) and Becker (1964) that makes the theory of human capital fully operational, and their research results are the best in this kind of literature after the Second World War. Human capital theory regards education and training as personal investment, which is of great guiding significance for solving many problems related to salary structure in the field of labor economics.