Abstract: By matching Chinese Household Income Project Survey (CHIPS) with the municipal export statistical samples, this paper constructs an education year explanation model which contains the export trade scale, and makes an empirical investigation on the impact of trade export scale expansion on the employment of highly-educated labor force. The result shows that, although export trade expansion in prefecture-level cities brings forward the increment of highly-educated labor force by significantly extending education year of low-educated workers, the improvement of the education level of the existing highly-educated workers is limited. Therefore, as far as China's current export product structure and the enterprise distribution conditions are concerned, the export trade can better promote the employment of labor force with less education, while the employment increase of highly-educated labor force should rely on comprehensive improvement of the quality of future export products.

Key words: export trade, employment of highly educated labor, natural instrumental variables