Research On The Impact Of Digital Transformation On Manufacturing Employment

As a major livelihood issue,employment has attracted much attention.China’s new labor force and college graduates who need to be employed every year hit new highs,but the structural contradiction of the labor market is prominent,and the difficulty of employment and recruitment coexist;In addition,the rapid development of modern digital technology such as electronic information and network communication has shown varying degrees of impact on the labor force in various fields of economic life.Therefore,employment has always been the focus of national policy makers,and it is also the focus of economists’ research.Based on this,this paper studies the impact of digital transformation on the total employment and employment structure of manufacturing industry.Firstly,it combs the relevant literature of digital transformation and manufacturing employment,defines the connotation of digital transformation,total employment and employment structure,expounds the definitions of substitution effect,creation effect and polarization effect,and analyzes the classical theory of technological progress on employment based on classical schools and technological innovation.Secondly,on the basis of substitution effect and creation effect,the substitution effect of manufacturing digital transformation on employment is further refined into: direct substitution effect,labor productivity effect and optimized management effect;The employment creation effect of digital transformation is divided into productivity effect,job creation effect and industrial chain extension effect.This paper analyzes the impact of digital transformation on the employment structure of low,medium and high skilled labor force,as well as the heterogeneous impact on the employment of industries with different factor intensity.Thirdly,the input-output method is used to calculate the digital development level of China’s manufacturing industry as a whole and sub industries,and it is found that the digital development level shows a stable upward trend on the whole.Specifically,the digital transformation level of technology intensive industries is the highest,followed by capital intensive industries,and the digital level of labor-intensive industries is the lowest;At the same time,the number of manufacturing employment shows an "n" trend of first rising,then decreasing and then rising.Finally,based on the panel data of China’s manufacturing industry from 2005 to2017,this paper selects the digital development degree and employment index of 14 sub industries,selects the average wage,industry openness,industry capital,industry profit margin and main business cost as the control variables,and empirically tests the impact of manufacturing digitization on the total employment and employment structure by using the fixed response model.The empirical results show that the digital transformation of manufacturing industry has a significant substitution effect on employment;The application of digital technology reduces the low skilled labor force,increases the employment of high skilled labor force and optimizes the employment structure;It is found that the digital development of labor-intensive and technology intensive industries has impacted the total employment of manufacturing industry,increased the employment of high skilled labor force and reduced the employment of low skilled labor force.The digitization of capital intensive industries has increased the employment and high skilled labor force.According to the theoretical analysis and empirical results,this paper puts forward the following countermeasures and suggestions: we should strengthen the guiding role of policies and speed up the investment in improving digital infrastructure;We should speed up the innovation and application of enterprise digital technology and improve the production efficiency of manufacturing enterprises;We should do a good job in risk early warning and supporting guarantee to cushion the negative impact of the digital transformation of manufacturing industry on employment;We should optimize human capital management and build a practical talent training and evaluation system;We should pay attention to the digital and differential development of various industries in the manufacturing industry and optimize the employment structure according to the characteristics of the industry.