Precarious work and labor market segmentation:a comparative study on mainland China and Hong Kong

摘要

The world-wide growth of precarious work has created a new type of labor market segmentation and calls for cross-society comparison study. Mainland China and Hong Kong facilitate such a comparison, since the two societies operated in quite different socioeconomic institutions have experienced the same change of employment relations. By analyzing two representative and comparable survey data, this research has found similarity as well as discrepancy regarding occurrence and segmentation of precarious work in the two labor markets. In general, precarious work distributes in more economic sectors in mainland China than it does in Hong Kong, while it engenders less segmentation in the former labor market. This is closely related to the institutional and practical differences in labor market regulation of the two societies.