Abstract:
Agricultural industry in Xinjiang is facing some challenges, including seasonal shortage of agricultural labors, increasing difficulty to attract more labors, and serious labor shortage for rural enterprises in Xinjiang, "big agriculture" industrial structure, and semi closed labor market. After analyzing the population dependency ratio, aging degree, and the trend of labor demand and supply in the future, this paper discussed the deeper reasons causing the labor supply from unlimited to very limited. Results show that comparing with the west and China in labor productivity, comparative labor productivity, labor participation rate, and coordination between employment structure and industrial structure, Xinjiang’s labor supply is hard to meet the future labor demand from the rapid economic development and Xinjiang is likely to face Lewis turning point of limited labor supply earlier than other parts of our country. However, the main reason of the current labor shortage in Xinjiang is not the number of labor supply, but rather the low labor participation rate and the inharmonious relationship between employment structure and industrial structure. In addition, the negative net labor migration is another reason for a limited supply of labor in the short term. This paper gives the following policy suggestions, including increasing labor participation rate, optimizing the industrial structure, adjusting labor policies, and encouraging innovative labor allocation.