The Choice And Improvement Of Policy Instruments For Balancing Rural And Urban Employment

Balancing urban and rural employment is facing new challenges and opportunities in the context of changing demography, the cyclical economic movement, and industrial transformation and upgrading. It is not only necessary to carry out the continuous innovation of institution and mechanisms, but also need to choose, combine and optimize the policy instruments. At the established regime, the latter is particularly important.The objective of balancing urban and rural employment is to eliminate the urban and rural labor market segmentation, and finally remove the dual economic structure. In this process, the responsibility of governments is to create an equal labor market for both urban and rural residents, reduce the gap between power of employers and migrant workers, reduce asymmetric information in labor market, and assist vulnerable groups to achieve employment and providing public employment services for people who apply for a job in city. To implement the above policy, the following policy instruments is needed, such as mandatory policy instruments, incentives policy instruments, instructive policy instrument information policy instruments and service instruments.Mandatory policy instruments include access control, deregulation, price control, and labor supervision, as well as labor dispute arbitration, adjudication and punishment. They are based on public power, with a high degree of effectiveness and fairness, but it is apt to cause market distortions. Make a unified plan for rural and urban employment need to set the conditions of an open household registration system by laws and regulations, to replace the urban unemployment rate with social unemployment, as well as to establish a social insurance system that can join and enjoy in different regions and different status, and be financed by governments above the provincial level. The incentive policy instruments mainly include financial subsidies, tax subsidies, loans and bounty. It is used to support and foster migrant worker organizations, purchase employment management and services and incent entrepreneurial activities. It is frequently used in labor force training area. In this process, the choice of service provider, the way to provide subsidy, and the quality supervision is all essential. The instructive policy instrument mainly includes fallowings: employment and wages instruct, labor price and salary guidance, collective wage negotiation coordination and the labor dispute mediation. Promulgating reference information, fostering migrant worker organizations, as well as coordinating the negotiations between employers and employees for wage and welfare are central to the instructive policy instrument. The information policy instruments include building information networks, information supply and policy advice, and so on. They are mainly used for job search, wage and benefit negotiation, as well as the protection of migrant workers and so on. The effect of the information instruments is directly related to the completeness of the information network and information accessibility, as well as the timeliness and reliability of the information.Service policy instruments include service supplied by governments, public enterprises, service contracts, and communities. They are mainly applied to job searching and providing employment and social security services, training services, as well as migrant worker's housing and living condition improvement. Service policy instrument requires closing to the need of its clients and providing service with efficiency, so the choice of supply methods and the reformation of the financial system are very important.The existent laws and regulations have provided a basis for the implementation of a mandatory policy instrument. However, the wage of migrant workers, working hour constrain, the signing up of employment contract, as well as social insurance etc. have not been well implemented because of the conflict between economic development and social development as well as the lack of monitor forces in governments. The implement of incentive policy instruments used in the training of labor force has had a positive effect, but the quality of the training is still to be enhanced. The subsidies provided by governments that to promote the disadvantaged groups in labor market is still not accessible for migrant workers. Since the government capacity on production of guiding information is not strong, the system of collective wage negotiations have not yet promoted, the organizing level of migrant workers as well as the independence of trade unions is not high enough. Therefore the effectiveness of incentive policy instruments is still poor. The enhancement of information policy instrument depends on the building of cross-regional information network and the strengthening of information awareness among inter-urban and rural migrant workers. The effect of service policy instruments is more significant in education of migrant workers' children. But there is still much space for improvement of housing, medical care and other basic areas of hygiene.Based on the analysis above, suggestions on optimizing the policy instrument in balancing the urban-rural employment are as follows : pushing the socialization of employment, promoting and improving the "principal - agent" relationship in employment management and service, enhancing the organization of migrant workers and the independence of trade unions, expanding the coverage of employment service, as well as improving the supply mechanisms of employment services. At the same time, internal management and external policies is also important to achieve the matching between them.