Author: Binlei Gong、Peinan Hu、Xiaoyun Wei

Labor transfer is a crucial means of achieving economic structural transformation and promoting the convergence of labor productivity. Currently, China's agricultural sector still harbors a significant amount of surplus labor, yet the influx of new migrant workers has nearly stalled. To foster high-quality economic development, this paper innovatively constructs a three-sector model that allows for pluriactivity, investigating how the push from rational allocation of agricultural factors and the pull from labor market integration influence labor employment decisions and transfer. This, in turn, affects the overall employment structure and the efficiency and output of each sector.

The findings reveal that: On one hand, relying solely on the push factor can significantly optimize the employment structure and substantially increase agricultural labor productivity by 68.9%. However, the influx of less efficient labor into the non-agricultural sector would reduce non-agricultural labor productivity by 4.4%. On the other hand, relying solely on the pull factor greatly enhances the output of the transferred population, driving growth of 20.4% in the non-agricultural sector and 18.0% in the overall economy. Yet, indiscriminately attracting agricultural labor would lead to a 9.8% decline in agricultural output, posing a threat to agricultural development and food security.

In contrast, a policy mix combining both push and pull can achieve coordinated development across multiple sectors and avoid structural imbalances. This paper also re-evaluates the effects of the aforementioned policies within the context of the continuously advancing new urbanization drive.