A Study on the Impact of Science and Technology Innovation on Employment in the Service Sector - An Analysis Based on Urban Panel Data

Abstract

Science, technology and innovation have a profound impact on the labor market in a wide range of areas. As a core sector of the country's economic growth, the employment situation in the service sector is of great significance to the country's economy and people's livelihood. This paper focuses on the question: does STI have a positive impact on employment in the service sector? Based on this, this paper firstly combs through the literature related to the theory of science and technology innovation and employment. Then, it briefly introduces the characteristics of STI and service industry labor force changes in China, and uses the number of invention grants and patent grants at the prefecture-level city level for the three years from 2017-2019 as the panel data, which is used as a quantitative indicator of the level of STI. Then the impact of STI on service industry employment is empirically examined, and how this impact changes over time is explored, along with a robustness test. The main conclusions of this paper are as follows: first, there is a positive association between STI and the amount of employment in the service sector. However, we also find that greater STI is needed over time to keep increasing the level of employment in the service sector. Second, the robustness test finds that the result that STI has a positive and significant effect on employment in the service sector is robust.