Migrant Workers’ Employment In The Urban Search Channels And Matching Approaches

Employment is one of the most important ways for job seekers to enter into cities and to gain revenue. Farmers, through employment transition, have become "migrant workers" with dual attributes of worker and farmer. Although they have made a significant contribution to the development of China’s economic take-offs, migrant workers have not enjoyed results deserved. Moreover, employment fluctuation of migrant workers has become one of important factors affecting the stability of China’s economy, due to narrow channels of employment, frequent occupational mobility and poor working conditions. How to stabilize migrant workers’ employment in the city, and finally settle them down in the city, is not only the inherent requirements to promote the urbanization process and narrow the income gap between urban and rural areas, but also the inevitable requirements of China’s economic and social stability of long-term health development.Based on the search-matching theory, a thorough analysis is conducted in this thesis by using a combination of empirical analysis and case study. Different from the previous research, farmer’s employment could be a sequential process of "search, match, turnover, and stable employment", a comprehensive analysis is conducted on the examination of constraints of each part and its matching path.First of all, searching as the first key link plays a fundamental role in the employment decision. Give much consideration to the two issues of family migration and female workers participation, the preference over search channels and gender differences deserves a deep analysis given the initial endowment. Empirical results show that search channels have a significant effect on job search duration of migrant workers, migrant workers who looking for jobs through network channels spend the shortest time, male migrant workers’ search time is less than the female, social network plays an important role to maximize revenue in the search process by breaking through the constraints of migrant workers’human capital.Secondly, the improvement of income and social security is the purpose of occupational mobility of migrant workers. Based on the previous literatures, the role of the two-factor (income and benefits) in the decision of migrant workers have been examined based on empirical data. Empirical results suggest that the purpose of migrant workers is for surviving rather than developing. However, welfare has become an important reference factors on stable employment.Thirdly, as the labor market frictions, the difference between real and expected outcomes induced the job turnovers of migrant workers. Based on the existing study between individual endowments and job turnover, a simultaneous model of the interaction between job turnover and migrant workers’ personal endowments is developed to explore the mechanism of job mobility by capital accumulation theory. Research conclusions have shown that there is an interaction between job mobility and capital accumulation. Namely, job mobility can increase human capital and social capital, meanwhile, capital accumulation can increase the probability of job mobility. Moreover, human capital can effectively improve the income level of migrant workers, but social capital has a negative effect on the income.Last but not the least, most migrant workers expect to integrate themselves into the city, however, the institutional constraints have become the main hurdles to the integration of migrant workers, institutional changes are necessary to stabilize the urban employment of migrant workers. Taking into account of difficulties of stable employment’s empirical research, case studies are employed to explore the ways of stable employment. It is believed that there are two trends, including income effect is weakening and benefits effect is increasing, whether to stabilize the employment of migrant workers needs to focus on their welfare besides wage.Compared with the previous studies, the theoretical explanations, empirical analysis and case studies are employed in this research on a thorough analysis of job search, job matching, job turnover, and stable employment. There are three contributions to the concerned issues, including research ideas, research methods, and research perspectives. The contribution of research ideas refer to, on the one hand, parts-wholes of employment. Different from the previous research, employment is regarded as a sequential process instead of a single factor, the employment is divided into four sequential parts of "search, match, turnover, and stable employment", and then test them respectively. On the other hand, a systematic research frramework of job turnover and income return via capital accumulation is developed. Such a research framework, which is more close to the real social relations, makes an effective way to avoid the defect of causation theory. The contribution of research method refers to identification of matching mechanism of migrant workers’ job match. Acemoglu identification method is used to identify migrant workers’ job matching mechanism, which is an analysis of the relative rather than absolute importance between the factors. The innovation of research perspective refers to the role of welfare factors in the decision of employment is examined, which is a supplement to the employment study of traditional migrant workers from the perspective of salary.