Job tasks and wage differentials between urban and rural migrant workers: new evidence from China

Purpose This study systematically examines hukou-based wage differentials in China through the lens of job tasks, with three core objectives: documenting systematic differences in task allocation between urban workers and rural migrants; examining hukou-based differences in wage outcomes for workers with similar task profiles and assessing how task allocation and task–wage associations relate to overall wage inequality. Design/methodology/approach Using multi-period Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) data and integrating occupational-level job task indicators, this study employs Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regressions to examine the association between task intensity and wages across hukou groups, Recentered Influence Function (RIF) regressions to test distributional heterogeneity and RIF-based Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method to quantify the contributions of job task endowment effects and coefficient effects to the hukou-based wage differentials. Findings The results show that rural migrant workers exhibit lower intensity in non-routine analytic (NRA) and routine cognitive tasks, while showing higher intensity in routine manual tasks. Furthermore, they face lower wage outcomes in NRA and non-routine interactive (NRI) tasks, with larger wage differentials observed in NRI tasks. Decomposition analysis further shows that endowment differences in NRA and routine tasks, combined with differences in conditional wage structures in NRI tasks, are associated with hukou-based wage differentials. Notably, the patterns of this gap exhibit significant distributional heterogeneity. Originality/value This study makes a systematic contribution to the literature on wage differentials in China by introducing a job-task analytical framework into the examination of hukou-based inequality. It rigorously measures structural differences in task allocation and task-associated wage outcomes between urban workers and rural migrants. In doing so, the study provides robust evidence from China's unique institutional context, offering meaningful insights for cross-country comparative studies on labor market segmentation and task-related group wage disparities.