Enterprise Digital Transformation and High-Quality Employment— Empirical Evidence from Employment Scale and Employment Structure

As digital technologies accelerate their integration into enterprise production and operations, how to balance digital transformation with employment expansion and structural improvement has become an important issue. This paper uses data from China's A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2024, employing a firm-year two-way fixed effects model, to examine the employment effects of enterprise digital transformation from the perspectives of employment scale and employment structure. We find that the degree of enterprise digital transformation is significantly associated with employment expansion and an increase in the number of highly educated and highly skilled employees; in the baseline regression, the proportions of both types of employees increase significantly, but the structural proportion results are relatively sensitive to measurement and identification methods. Heterogeneity analysis shows that inter-group differences by ownership type and industry attributes are generally insignificant, while regional differences are more pronounced. Mechanism tests indicate that digital transformation is significantly associated with firm size expansion and increased R&D investment. This paper provides micro-level evidence for the coordinated promotion of digital transformation and high-quality employment.