Keywords: employment theory; Employment problem; use for reference
I. Introduction
China's economy has been growing rapidly for many years. In recent years, the economic growth rate is around 10%, which is one of the fastest developing countries in the world. However, high economic growth has not brought high employment. Furthermore, the employment situation is closely related to the development speed of the national economy. Generally speaking, the employment growth brought by certain economic growth is also certain, but the contribution of China's economic growth to employment growth is not obvious.
In recent ten years, China's economy has developed rapidly, but the employment growth is relatively slow. At present, there are a large number of rural surplus labor forces in China, and a large number of college graduates are faced with employment choices, even unemployment after graduation. It can be said that China's employment pressure is great, the total labor supply exceeds demand, the local employment supply is insufficient, and structural contradictions are increasingly prominent.
Therefore, in the face of huge employment pressure, we should broaden our horizons, base ourselves on the national conditions, and fully learn from the research results of employment theory in western economics to solve the employment problem, which is of great practical significance to our country.
Second, the evolution of Western employment theory
Employment is an important social and economic issue, which has long been concerned by western economists, thus forming a unique employment theory. Western economists' long-term research and exploration of employment problems have formed a multi-angle and multi-level employment theory to meet the needs of market economy. For example, the employment theory of classical economics school, Keynes's full employment theory, the employment theory of neoclassical comprehensive school, and the wage sticky employment theory of neo-Keynesian.
(A) the employment theory of the classical school
Say's law is the cornerstone of the employment theory of classical economics school, and its basic connotation is that supply creates demand. The representative economists of this school are Marshall and Pigou. Starting from the perfectly competitive market structure, they think that the prices of products and monetary wages in the market can be adjusted spontaneously according to market supply and demand. The interaction between labor supply and labor demand determines the actual wage and employment level, and the amount of employment when supply and demand are balanced is the level of full employment. Furthermore, as long as there is no wage rigidity, the wage rate can be freely expanded, the market mechanism can freely play a regulatory role, all available labor resources can be used for production, and the labor market can always achieve employment balance. Long-term persistent unnatural unemployment cannot exist, only voluntary unemployment and short-term friction unemployment.
They believe that the solution to the unemployment problem is to eliminate the rigidity of monetary wages, so that monetary wages can change accordingly with market demand. On the premise of free competition, the classical school advocates market regulation and balanced employment, and denies the universality of unemployment. However, we can still understand the emergence of unemployment from another angle. Unemployment is the result of insufficient competition. To solve the unemployment problem, we must first solve the problem of insufficient competition in the labor market.
(B) Keynes's employment theory
Keynes's employment theory is based on the principle of effective demand, which holds that the number of jobs depends on effective demand. The reason why unemployment persists is that there is "insufficient effective demand" in capitalist society as a whole. That is, when the total supply price and the total demand price reach equilibrium, the total demand is insufficient, resulting in more social unemployment, that is, underemployment. The Keynesian theory of promoting employment actually advocates reducing wages, that is, reducing real wages without reducing nominal wages. But the premise is to expand the total demand, because the expansion of the total demand will inevitably lead to inflation, and the nominal wages of workers remain unchanged, but the real wages are relatively reduced. In order to achieve full employment, Keynes believed that it was necessary to abandon laissez-faire economic policies and put forward demand management policies relying on state intervention, thus promoting production and increasing employment.
(C) employment theory of neoclassical comprehensive school
At the end of 1960s, the economies of major capitalist countries fell into stagflation predicament, and Keynesian theory failed. Therefore, economists of neoclassical comprehensive school such as Tobin and Du Shengbei put forward the "structural unemployment problem", trying to explain the complexity of unemployment and inflation with the change of market structure, and think that the incompleteness and structural changes of micro-market have caused stagflation. It is concluded that structural unemployment is a structural imbalance between labor supply and demand caused by changes in economic structure, and the existence of structural unemployment will inevitably lead to the coexistence of unemployment and job vacancies. Because of the strong trade union power, wages are easy to rise and not easy to fall. Although there is unemployment in society, monetary wages will not fall. As long as there are job vacancies, monetary wages will rise rapidly. Therefore, the coexistence of unemployment and job vacancies is transformed into the coexistence of unemployment and rising monetary wages, and then into the complications of unemployment and inflation. This theory advocates solving the structural unemployment problem from the perspective of employment content or employment structure. For example, the government should guide the income policy, that is, the government should take measures to limit the rise of wages and prices to alleviate inflation; Pay attention to improving the labor market and alleviating unemployment caused by changes in the technical structure of the labor market; Appropriately modify and improve the unemployment subsidy system to encourage unemployed people to find jobs.
(D) New Keynesian wage sticky employment theory
New Keynesian labor market theory mainly includes nominal wage stickiness and real wage stickiness. The stickiness of nominal wages is caused by the existence of long-term labor contracts and the staggered adjustment of wages. Wages are usually determined by contracts signed by trade unions and enterprises through consultation. During the validity of the contract, wages cannot be adjusted with market supply and demand. Even if there are no trade unions and enterprises that have not signed labor contracts, wages will not change easily due to the influence of sticky wages of enterprises with contracts. Implicit contract theory holds that with the passage of time, employees and employers will form some informal contracts for stable income, thus making wages sticky. The reason why implicit contracts lead to unemployment is that under the condition of asymmetric information, the limited information of manufacturers and workers determines the inefficiency and insufficient employment of balanced contracts, so workers are usually dismissed. The theory of efficiency wage shows that employers will actively pay high wages to employees, so as to improve their production enthusiasm, increase the opportunity cost of job-hopping and laziness, and attract capable high-tech talents. Insider-outsider theory points out that insiders have important bargaining power and strong employment advantages and status in wage determination because of the protection of labor conversion costs. Therefore, the wage adjustment mainly depends on the employed rather than the unemployed, so involuntary unemployment may occur. Therefore, to solve the unemployment problem, the government should intervene in wage contracts, reduce wage stickiness and increase wage flexibility, so that wages can be adjusted timely, moderately and flexibly.
(E) the employment theory of anti-classical economics
The "anti-classicism" school advocates abandoning the laissez-faire economic policy and learning from Japan's economic model and the administrative-led market economy model. On the issue of employment, it is emphasized that on the premise of ensuring the free employment of enterprises and job seekers' self-employment, and on the basis of maintaining the vitality of enterprises and giving full play to the role of market mechanism, the state carries out macro-control and policy guidance on market activities. At the same time, establish a labor model with stable employment, smooth labor flow and small labor contract and wage gap.
Three. Enlightenment and Reference of Western Employment Theory to China
(A) Enlightenment and reference from the employment theory of the classical school
First of all, we should solve the problems of labor market segmentation and employment discrimination, improve the structure of the labor market, and achieve full competition in the labor market. At present, the competition in China's labor market is not fully manifested, the market is seriously divided between urban and rural areas, and employment discrimination can be seen everywhere. There are serious discriminatory clauses in employment recruitment, such as household registration discrimination, regional and dialect discrimination, academic discrimination, gender and age discrimination and even physical discrimination such as height and appearance, marital status discrimination, criminal experience discrimination, surname discrimination, etc., which has become a normal phenomenon in China's labor recruitment. These phenomena seriously hinder the normal development of China's labor market, destroy the fair competition environment in the job market, and lead to a huge waste of human resources. Therefore, transparency, fairness, legalization and marketization must be strengthened.
Secondly, in order to standardize China's labor market, we should strictly implement the labor contract system while using the market price mechanism, and encourage enterprises to fulfill the relevant provisions of the popular SA8000 social responsibility certification standard to protect the legitimate rights and interests of workers.
(B) Enlightenment and reference of Keynes's employment theory
Keynes's employment theory emphasizes macro-fiscal policy, monetary policy, government intervention in foreign trade and tax policy to regulate employment, which is a total employment theory. It only examines the changes in the total amount and level of employment in capitalist society, but does not analyze the structure of employment. Because it only emphasizes increasing effective demand to solve the unemployment problem, but ignores the management and improvement of labor supply; Only emphasize the increase of total investment and ignore the employment efficiency of investment and the optimization of investment structure. Therefore, in the process of solving the employment problem by expanding the scale of government investment, China must pay attention to improving the employment efficiency of investment and invest in industries and fields that absorb more labor as much as possible. In addition, the government should pay attention to the choice of economic growth mode, formulate economic growth plans and industrial policies conducive to increasing employment, and combine technology-intensive, capital-intensive and labor-intensive growth modes. Therefore, we should implement the development strategy of giving priority to employment, choose the "employment-centered" economic growth model, implement employment-based economic policies, optimize the employment structure and industrial structure, and actively develop labor-intensive industries.
(C) Enlightenment and reference of employment theory of neoclassical comprehensive school
The neo-classical comprehensive school thinks that the government should solve the structural unemployment problem mainly from the labor market and manpower policy. First, take all-round measures to develop human resources, and provide continuous training for the labor force in multiple levels, fields and forms, so that workers can master new knowledge and skills in time; Second, vigorously develop employment agencies, responsible for information consultation, guidance services, employment introduction, etc., so that enterprises and job seekers can achieve information symmetry; Third, reduce the restrictions of the household registration system on the labor force, increase the interregional mobility of the labor force, and help solve the regional migration of the labor force and enterprises.
According to the present situation of our country, we should establish and improve the employment education system, actively develop human resources and comprehensively improve the level of vocational and technical education. It is necessary to popularize nine-year compulsory education for school-age children in rural areas, and at the same time strengthen vocational education and technical training and on-the-job training guidance for the labor force, so as to facilitate the timely and effective allocation of production factors and eliminate structural unemployment. Encourage and guide the labor force to flow between regions and industries to realize the optimal allocation of resources. Then, establish and improve the labor market service system, with the help of the network information resource platform, strengthen the release of relevant information such as vocational guidance, vocational introduction, vocational training, employment of special groups, re-employment of laid-off workers, and realize the sharing of information resources.
(4) The enlightenment and reference of the new Keynesian sticky wage theory.
The wage stickiness proposed by neo-Keynesianism is actually an inevitable phenomenon in the operation of the labor market itself, and it is impossible to solve it only by the adjustment of the labor market. The government can regularly conduct a nationwide survey on the wage level of the whole society, and set a benchmark wage level based on the basic living standards of all provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government for the reference of enterprises in various regions, so that the wages of enterprises can fluctuate within a reasonable range. In addition, the government should control the excessive rise of non-wage labor costs to enhance wage elasticity. For example, the dividend distribution of joint-stock enterprises should adopt appropriate dividend distribution policies according to the growth stage of enterprises, and the year-end bonus paid to employees by enterprises at the end of the year should be within a reasonable budget. Because dividends and bonuses are an important part of the non-wage costs of enterprises, if they are paid too much, they will damage the market competitiveness of enterprises, which is not conducive to the long-term development and employment of enterprises in both short-term and long-term terms.
(V) Enlightenment and reference from the employment theory of anti-classical economics.
It can be said that the employment theory of anti-classical economics is more instructive to reality. Employment security enterprises have flexible employment mechanism, strengthen the construction of human resources department, ensure that enterprises can recruit suitable and qualified labor in the first time, and at the same time, job seekers can freely and flexibly choose jobs that suit their satisfaction and fully adapt to the competition of market economy. The government should strengthen macro-control of the labor market and formulate a population policy. On the one hand, it should control and influence the supply of labor by adjusting the educational structure. On the other hand, the state should give macro-guidance to market activities and establish a stable social security system to establish a new employment service system.
Four. conclusion
In a word, western employment theory has important reference significance for China to seek ways to solve employment contradictions. At the same time, according to China's own specific situation, China should not only rely on the market mechanism to optimize the allocation of resources, promote the growth of social and economic aggregates, and expand the effective demand for labor, but also have the institutional guarantee to improve the market regulation system. The two aspects complement each other and cannot be neglected.
References:
[1] Xiao Jing. Western unemployment theory and employment problems in China [J]. Law and Society, 2006, (1 1).
[2] Liu Jian. Study on Countermeasures to Alleviate the Employment Contradiction between Urban and Rural Areas in the Western Region [M]. Chongqing: Southwestern University of Finance and Economics Press, 2007.
[3] Luo, Analysis and Reference on the Evolution of Western Employment Theory [J]. Economics and Economic Management, 2003, (2).
[4] Tan Yunjin. The reference significance of western employment theory to China [J]. Business Times, 2005, (12).