above, whereas about 42 percent of inter-province in-migrants had high school education or above. The contrast is really small. The same is hold true for Henan. In other words, Zhao’s hypothesis can only be applied to the rich region such as Zhejiang, not in relatively poor western and central regions such as Henan and Sichuan.

# **6. The migration and labor market segregation**

Although studies on the labor force segregation in towns are few, there are some studies examining the consequence of migration on labor market segregation (Meng 2001; Yao 2001). While Yao found that migrant was 17.6 percent less likely to have a white-collar job than a local resident, controlling for personal characteristics, Meng found a sharp occupational differentials between local population in the cities and in-migrants.

To explore this issue of whether labor market became segregated in towns, we present the occupational composition of in-migrants and of local population in towns in three provinces (Table 11). We found that in Zhejiang two-thirds of in-migrants (63 percent) worked as blue-collar production workers, which was higher than town local population. Only about 43 percent of town local population worked as blue-collar production workers. Data further reveal that in-migrants were generally less likely to take white-collar jobs such as managers and technicians as compared to the town local population. Thus, labor market in towns in Zhejiang seems to be quite segregated, with in-migrants being more likely to take blue color production work, which might require hardship in their working conditions.

In Table 12, we further explore this issue by breaking down occupational composition of towns in-migrations according to whether they come from the same province or from other provinces. Clearly, data reveal that in Zhejiang in-migrants from other provinces were even more likely to be blue-collar production workers than inmigrants from same province. For example, 83 percent of in-migrants from other provinces were engaged in blue-collar production jobs, whereas only 43 percent of inmigrant from same province did so. This probably could be explained by the lower educational attainment of those cross-province migrants. Thus the probability of being a blue production worker is twice higher for in-migrants coming from other provinces than the in-migrants from the same province. Likewise, for the white-collar jobs, the chances are much smaller for the in-migrants from other provinces as shown in the Table. Thus labor market segregation not only exists between town in-migrants and local population, but also exists between those who came from same province or came from other provinces.

However, we also find quite different story in other two relatively poor provinces. Data in Table 11 do not show a sharp contrast in percentage distribution of blue-collar production workers between those in-migrants and local population as we have seen in the Zhejiang data. Only slightly higher percentage of in-migrants worked as blue-collar production worker than that for the town local population, 24% vs. 16% in Henan and 23% vs. 19% in Sichuan. Thus, data suggest labor market has been much more flexible in Henan and Sichuan than in Zhejiang.

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