Few existing studies have focused on the impact of multidimensional relatedness and its potential complementarity on regional job diversification, especially the regional heterogeneity of these impacts. Based on the population censuses and sampling surveys as well as the enterprise registration data of 264 Chinese cities from 2000 to 2015, this study constructs industrial, occupational, and job relatedness networks, and explores the spatiotemporal dynamics and mechanisms of jobs entry in Chinese cities from the perspective of multidimensional relatedness. The empirical results show that regions are more likely to diversify new jobs that are closely related to the existing job structure as well as to industrial and occupational structures. Industry relatedness and occupation relatedness are complementary channels for jobs entry, and this complementary effect is more important for the entry of complex jobs. The impact of multidimensional relatedness on jobs entry varies significantly by labor market size. Job relatedness has the strongest effect in small cities, whereas industry and occupation relatedness as well as their complementarity are stronger in large cities. For high-complexity jobs entry, occupation relatedness outweighs industry relatedness in large and medium cities, while small cities contrast this and rely heavily on the complementary effect of these two types of relatedness. • Job relatedness, industry relatedness and occupation relatedness can facilitate the entry of new jobs. • Industry relatedness and occupation relatedness are complementary channels for job entry in China. • Multidimensional relatedness and the complementary effects are more important for the entry of high-complex jobs. • Multidimensional relatedness and the complementary effects on new job entry show heterogeneity across labor market size.
Yan et al. (Wed,) studied this question.