China's Urban Non-formal Employment Problem

The problem of employment has always been an emphasis in the study of economics, and the study is now focused on the informal employment owing to its great contribution to our country in improvement of the current difficult employment situation and mitigation of poverty.Adopting a synthetic approach of theoretical and empirical methods, and with reference to the fundamental theories on employment and informal employment, this paper probes into the situation of informal employment both in China and abroad and points out the reasons for the development of town informal employment in our country. Several measures are proposed to remove the existing major barriers and promote the development of town informal employment.Firstly, this paper starts from a review of the situation of informal employment abroad. In the developed countries, informal employment mainly consists of part-time employment and temporary employment. Informal employment, which is an obvious trend in future employment, provides both low-skilled jobs and high-skilled jobs. However, in developing countries, informal employment is principally composed of self-employment and home work, which is one of the main channels of employment. This paper elaborates the experience of other countries in the development of informal employment as a good reference to our countrySecondly, through an analysis of the existing situation and causes of the development of the town informal employment in our country, this paper reveals that the informal employment has become an effective way to solve the current town unemployment problems in our country. Its birth and growth has a theoretical basis and fits the situation of our country. Moreover, informal employment not only conforms to the direction of adjustment of the macro economic structure, but can also meet the requirements of both the employment demand and supply market. The paper clarifies the theoretical basis of the informal employment from the perspectives of its internal and external drives, and the system background, and digs into the causes for its development on macro basis from the adjustment of structures of ownership, industry, products and technology, and the causes on micro basis from the quantity and structure of the supply and demand in the employment market.Finally, this paper analyses the barriers to the development of informal employment in ideas, legislation, policy, system, resources availability and management, with a focus on the barriers in system and resources availability. Several measures are proposed to remove the barriers and promote the development of informal employment.There is a great potential in the development of informal employment. It is not only an effective way to solve the unemployment problem in our country, but also a trend in future mode of employment. As there are still a lot of barriers to its development, the government should perform its encouraging and regulating functions effectively and encourage, foster and regulate the development of informal employment via its policy making and implementation.