Can public employment services improve employment opportunities of rural-to-urban migrant workers in China?

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the impact of public employment services (PES) on the employment opportunities of rural-to-urban migrant workers in China from 2015 to 2020. The regression results show that PES such as vocational introduction, vocational guidance, and vocational training significantly increase the employment rate of rural-to-urban migrant workers. The transmission mechanism is that PES affect the employment information and vocational skills. Moreover, PES are more effective in improving employment for disadvantaged groups such as older, female, and married migrant workers.

KEYWORDS:

• Public employment services
• Chinese migrant workers
• employment opportunities
• vocational skill
• employment information

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J15

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Key project of National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 22AZD048), the Major Program of the National Social Science Foundation of China under Grant number (23ZDA034), Major Educational Innovation Project of Shanghai (Grant No. 2023SKZD03), the “Chunhui Program” Cooperation Project of Ministry of Education (Grant No. HZKY20220388), Science and Technology Research Project of Jiangxi Provincial Education Department (Grant No. GJJ2200559), Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province (Grant No. 2023J05098), and Social Science Foundation of Fujian Province (Grant No. FJ2023C035).