IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/chieco/v99y2026ics1043951x26000799.html

What cities pay for: IT vs. interpersonal skills in China’s urban labor markets

Author

Listed:
  • Hong, Dian
  • Qiu, Sirui

Abstract

We use the near-universe of Chinese online job ads (2016–2023; 3.2M postings) to measure job-level skill demand and city-specific skill premia. Combining keyword dictionaries with a Chinese BERT classifier, we construct standardized intensities for skills. Three facts emerge. (i) Skill requirements vary sharply across metropolitan areas (MAs), especially for IT. (ii) Prices do not always track skill intensities: high skill demand does not imply high skill premium. (iii) IT and interpersonal premia polarize across MAs and also polarize within jobs. Results offer policy-relevant descriptive implications for worker location and firm siting.

Suggested Citation

  • Hong, Dian & Qiu, Sirui, 2026. "What cities pay for: IT vs. interpersonal skills in China’s urban labor markets," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:chieco:v:99:y:2026:i:c:s1043951x26000799
    DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2026.102729
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X26000799
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.chieco.2026.102729?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population
    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:chieco:v:99:y:2026:i:c:s1043951x26000799. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/chieco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.