The Impact of New Quality Productive Forces on Employment Structure Upgrading: Evidence from the Perspective of Educational Investment

Using a balanced panel of 31 Chinese provinces from 2013 to 2024, this study examines how new quality productive forces (NQPF) relate to employment structure upgrading and whether educational investment strengthens this relationship. An entropy-weighted NQPF index and two-way fixed-effects models show that a one-standard-deviation increase in NQPF is associated with a 2.21-percentage-point rise in the employment share of high-end, knowledge-intensive services. The result remains robust to alternative outcome definitions, lagged NQPF, sample exclusions, and internal-instrument estimates. Further evidence indicates that NQPF is positively associated with digital financial inclusion, innovation, and technology-market activity, providing channel-consistent support for the proposed mechanism. Educational investment significantly amplifies the NQPF–employment relationship, while the association is most visible in western, higher-GDP, and lower-intervention observations. By linking a multidimensional productive-capability index to employment reallocation, this study highlights the complementary roles of technological transformation, market institutions, and human-capital investment. These findings extend research on emerging-market structural transformation.