Social Security Contribution Rate and Its Impacts on Labor Demand of Enterprises in Carbon Neutral Context

With the government setting stricter standard on carbon emission, enterprises are facing more environmental pressure and cost these years. At the same time, China’s State Council has officially announced a further reducing the social security contribution rate from May 1, 2019, it is worthy of assessing that if the reduction would decompress enterprises and promote labor demand. Our results shows that social security contribution rate does not have significantly impacts on enterprises’ labor demand overall. However, when wage and benefit are controlled, it has a direct impact on labor demand. Basic regression and heterogeneity analysis both confirm it. Wage and benefit play intermediary roles as the results show. Social security contribution rate has negatively impact on wage and benefit, which help to keep the total labor remuneration and then labor demand unchanged. State-owned and private enterprises show similar results. However, laborintensive and non-labor-intensive enterprises show slightly different results.