In Chapter 3, we examined the impacts of state policies on patterns of educational experience in urban China. As urban youth came to the end of their educational journey, delayed, rushed, interrupted, or otherwise completed, they faced the next critical stage in their life course: entry into the labor force. This is a critical stage because, until the 1990s, job mobility across work organizations in urban China was very low (see Chapter 9). For many employees, location in the first workplace often meant their only, life-long work destination. Moreover, job mobility, if there was any, is likely to be path dependent on the previous job location. For example, it is easier to transfer from one state firm to another than from a nonstate firm to a state firm. As we discussed in Chapter 2, types of work organizations are associated with significantly different economic benefits, welfare programs, and career prospects. Therefore, entry into the labor force often had lasting impacts on subsequent events in one's life course, and patterns of first-job attainment shed light on stratification processes in the distribution of life chances.

This chapter centers on patterns of first job attainment – one's access to types of occupations and work organizations – and the allocative mechanisms underlying these processes. Following the general analytical strategy discussed earlier, we examine how opportunities and the association between social origins and first-job attainment varied across historical periods as a function of shifting state policies.