关键词: 非正规经济, 非正规就业, 发展, 城市化

Abstract:

In the process of urbanization, a large number of rural labor forces do not enter urban formal sectors, but get employed in informal sectors. This fact leads to a neglect of the effect of urban informal employment on urbanization when we examine the relationship between urban employment and urbanization on the basis of normal statistical data. By using the co-integration test and error correction model, this paper explores the effects of urban informal employment on the urbanization measured by the proportion of urban population in total population. It develops an estimation method to measure urban informal employment in China based on the International Labor Organization's definition of informal employment. It is found that from 1990 to 2010 urban informal employment in China has grown to be a primary source of the growth of urban employment. In 2010, urban informal employment accounted for 50.7% of total urban employment. In particular, the unregistered employment as part of informal employment accounted for 32.8% of urban employment. Moreover, most of urban informal employment is geographically concentrated in provinces of eastern China. The models show that the relationship between informal employment, formal employment and urbanization is characterized with a stable equilibrium in the long term due to the existence of a regulatory mechanism within the urbanization system although this relationship is fluctuant in the short term. It is testified that the growth of urban informal employment contributes to the development of urbanization. That urban informal employment grows by 1% will contribute to an increase of urbanization rate by 0.1%. Informal employment should be considered as a condition of China's rapid urbanization in the post-reform era. It has been widely noted that a basic conflict of China's urbanization is the gap between the unlimited supply of rural labor forces and the limited ability of cities to absorb them. This paper suggests that informal employment should serve as a solution to this conflict. It is argued that the challenge to China's urbanization is not only from the problem of unemployment, but also from how to tackle urban informal employment outside the social welfare system. Dealing with the problem of the latter is also an important task of the global program called "decent work" which has been promoted by the International Labor Organization in the past decades.

Key words: informal economy, informal employment, development, urbanization