Abstract
Employment is the greatest livelihood and the most basic support
for economic development. In recent years, the scale and scope of digital
economy has expanded dramatically, triggering revolutionary changes in
employment patterns. Especially in the Yangtze River Delta region. This paper
is based on panel data of 41 prefecture level cities in the Yangtze River Delta
region from 2011 to 2021. Firstly, the fixed-effects regression model is used
to empirically analyze the impact of the digital economy on the employment
scale in the YRD region, and the intermediary mechanism model is further used
to verify the role of industrial structure upgrading in the digital economy's
impact on the employment scale. The study finds that: The digital economy has
significantly expanded the employment scale in the YRD region, indicating that
the employment creation effect is greater than the employment substitution
effect. In the heterogeneity analysis, this impact is more significant in the
central cities of the YRD region, areas with higher levels of urbanization and
well-developed digital infrastructures. The digital economy can promote the optimization
and upgrading of the employment market in the YRD region through the upgrading
of the industrial structure, expanding the scale of employment, optimizing the
employment structure.
Keywords: Digital economy
development, Yangtze River Delta region, Employment scale, Industrial structure
upgrade.