Addressing the COVID-19 shock: The potential job creation in China by the RCEP
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-1-2022
Abstract
In 2020, coronavirus disease (COVID-19) left around 81% of the global workforce, nearly 2.7 billion workers, affected. Employment in China was the first to be hit by COVID-19. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is expected to bring dynamism to China's employment market in an era of long COVID-19. This study aims to examine the number of sectoral jobs that the RCEP will create in China, with the number of skilled or unskilled labour employed in each sector. The exogenous shocks to the RCEP can be reflected in the number of jobs created through multipliers based on a social accounting matrix compiled from China's input-output tables in 2017, combined with the employment satellite accounts compiled. The results show that the RCEP is expected to create over 17 million potential jobs in China, with unskilled labour accounting for 10.44 million and skilled labour for 6.77 million. It is even expected that there will be job losses in the metalworking machinery sector. The contribution of this paper can serve as a reference for policies to protect vulnerable sectors, further open up trade markets and strengthen cooperation among RCEP members as important measures to address the employment impact of long COVID-19.
Keywords
coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), social accounting matrix (SAM), job creation
Divisions
advanced,Faculty_of_Business_and_Accountancy
Publication Title
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Volume
19
Issue
23
Publisher
MDPI
Publisher Location
ST ALBAN-ANLAGE 66, CH-4052 BASEL, SWITZERLAND