Estimates of China’s Rural Surplus Labor and Its Structure from 2002 to 2010

Guo Jinxing  and Wang Qingfang
Institute of Economics, Nankai University, Tianjin, China

Abstract: This paper investigates the structural changes of China’s rural surplus labor over time. According to our estimates, the number of agricultural surplus workers declined sharply by more than 90% between 2002 and 2010. During this period, explicit unemployment in rural areas increased by 70% to become the main form of surplus labor. Among rural surplus workers, the proportions of workers aged 40 and above, workers with primary and lower education levels and female workers show a clear upward trend, reaching 72.3%, 48.11% and 56.99% respectively in 2010. These changes can explain the apparent paradox of concurrent surplus labor, rising wages and migrant worker shortage. These structural changes in the labor surplus makeup indicate that the Lewis Turning Point (LTP) has arrived.

Keywords: explicit surplus labor, implicit surplus labor, surplus labor structure, Lewis Turning Poin

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