| Employment is the most basic of people’s livelihood.To some extent,the problem of employment is the rice bowl.To solve the problem of employment is always a major task for economic and social development.Nowadays,with the acceleration of the new industrialization process,technology has been a new round of progress,and the new generation of technologies represented by big data,cloud computing,artificial intelligence,blockchain,Internet of things,etc.,keep rising and developing rapidly.Digital technology is widely used in all walks of life,but part of the work completed by human has been replaced by digital technology,making labor employment facing new challenges,especially in the impact of the novel coronavirus epidemic,the grim employment situation has once again become the focus of attention,causing widespread concern.However,at present,there are few literatures on the connection between enterprise digital transformation and employment effect,and the influence relationship and possible influence mechanism between the two can only be inferred from relevant literatures.Therefore,the in-depth discussion of this problem has its important practical significance.Based on theoretical analysis,this paper uses panel data of Chinese listed companies from 2007 to 2021 to empirically test the impact of enterprise digital transformation on employment and its mechanism.The results show that,contrary to the common concern that "technology replaces human",digital transformation of enterprises is conducive to improving the employment level of enterprises’ employees.After using time-varying DID to identify causality and control possible exogenous factors,this paper finds that the promotion effect of enterprise digital transformation on employment is still robust.Based on heterogeneity analysis,it is found that compared with foreign enterprises,the digital transformation of state-owned enterprises and private enterprises has a more obvious effect on the growth of employment level.For both manufacturing and service industries,the improvement of enterprises’ digital transformation level has significantly promoted the growth of the number of employees.There is no difference between high-tech enterprises and non-high-tech enterprises,labor-intensive enterprises and non-labor-intensive enterprises in the effect of digital transformation on employment growth.In addition,this paper further analyzed the impact of enterprise digital transformation on employment structure from the perspectives of education level and occupation classification,and found that enterprise digital transformation significantly increased the number and proportion of employees with bachelor’s degree or above,and promoted the employment level of highly skilled labor engaged in complex activities.It inhibits the employment level of employees with less education(high school education or less)who are engaged in regular labor.Mechanism analysis shows that enterprise digital transformation can improve enterprise employment level by increasing output scale and total factor productivity.Digital transformation does not show a significant substitution effect on the overall employment level,but it does show a significant substitution effect on the employment of low-skilled labor,which is consistent with the conclusion of heterogeneity analysis.The conclusion of this paper provides some reference for analyzing the relationship between enterprises and employment.At the same time,it also means that accelerating the pace of digital transformation of enterprises can better stabilize employment,and then promote the high-quality development of national economy. |
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