Research on the Employment Effects of the Integration of Digital Economy and Real Economy

Promoting the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy is a key measure to accelerate the formation of new productive forces, build a modern industrial system, and drive high-quality economic development. From a micro perspective, this study measures the technological integration behavior of enterprises in the digital and real industries, by using patent information from Chinese companies and matching patent data with publicly listed company data. It systematically examines the impact of digital-real integration on labor employment and its underlying mechanisms. The findings indicate that digital-real integration significantly enhances employment levels and promotes the optimization and upgrading of its structures. Mechanism analysis reveals that both productivity and cost effects serve as the internal mechanisms for increasing employment scale, while quality enhancement effects and innovation-driven effects facilitate the optimization of employment structures. The heterogeneity analysis from both internal characteristics and external environments shows that the "stabilizing employment" effect of digital-real integration is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises, high-tech industries, regions with strong intellectual property protection, and areas with advanced infrastructure. Further analysis indicates that the digital product service industry, digital technology application sector, and data-driven industries contribute to stabilizing employment, whereas the digital product manufacturing sector does not exhibit significant effects. This research elucidates how digital-real integration promotes labor employment from the micro-economic effects and underlying mechanisms, provides new pathways to enhance labor employment from a new perspective, and offers empirical evidence to accelerate the deep development of digital-real integration.