Urban Unemployment Duration Analysis in Post-Reform China

Abstract

We link China’s accession to the WTO with the unemployment duration of urban jobseekers. Using data from the Rural Urban Migration in China (RUMiC) of a survey conducted in early 2008, we construct an inflow sample of those who started a period of joblessness between January 2002 and December 2007 to estimate the unemployment duration for local urban jobseekers. Deploying the Cox Proportional Hazards and Accelerated Failure Time models, we find reduced trade policy uncertainty significantly shortens unemployment duration, with hazard-rate varying across internal in-migrants and urban natives, due to variations in job accessibility and reservation wages.