人工智能发展对就业供求结构失衡的影响OACHSSCD

The rapid iteration of artificial intelligence(AI)is reshaping firms' modes of production and the structure of labor-market demand.Meanwhile,the relatively slow adjustment of China's higher education disciplinary composition has led to a growing structural mismatch between labor supply and industrial demand.Against this background,whether firms' increasing willingness to develop AI further exacerbates the structural imbalance in employment has emerged as a pressing issue.Using panel data on Chinese A-share-listed firms from 2011 to 2021,this paper systematically examines the impact of firms' AI development willingness on the structural imbalance between labor supply and demand and investigates the underlying mechanisms. This paper constructs an indicator of firms' AI development willingness through textual analysis based on the frequency of AI-related keywords in annual reports.Drawing on the three-sector classification framework,it measures the structural imbalance between labor supply and demand by matching the distribution of university graduates across academic disciplines with industry-level labor demand.To address endogeneity,the number of granted AI-related patents is employed as an instrumental variable,while firms' actual AI development level,measured by industry-level robot penetration,is introduced to examine the transmission mechanism.The empirical analysis adopts two-way fixed-effects models,supplemented by instrumental-variable estimation,heterogeneity analysis,and robustness tests. The results show that firms' AI development willingness significantly exacerbates the structural imbalance between labor supply and demand,and this conclusion remains robust after a series of robustness and endogeneity tests.Further analysis indicates that the imbalance is more pronounced among bachelor's degree graduates than among associate-degree graduates and postgraduates,and the effect is stronger for non-high-tech firms and heavily polluting firms.Regionally,the effect is significantly positive in eastern and central China but insignificant in western China.Mechanism analysis confirms the transmission path of"development willingness-improvement in actual development level-worsening imbalance,"indicating that firms' AI development willingness promotes actual AI development,changes labor demand and the skill structure,and thereby aggravates the structural imbalance in employment. This paper contributes to the literature in four respects.First,it develops an integrated analytical framework jointly considering firm-side labor demand and the supply of talent from higher education to explain the structural imbalance in employment.Second,it constructs a novel firm-level indicator of the mismatch between firms' labor demand and the disciplinary composition of university graduates.Third,by distinguishing AI development willingness from actual AI development level,it identifies the distinct roles of AI signaling effects and realized technological investments in shaping employment outcomes.Fourth,it provides systematic evidence on heterogeneity across educational attainment,firm type,and region. The findings suggest that firms should promote responsible AI development,higher education institutions should improve disciplinary adjustment and interdisciplinary talent cultivation,and governments should establish a dynamic matching mechanism between technological change and talent supply to promote the effective alignment among AI development,higher education,and high-quality employment.