Agglomeration of human capital: Evidence from city choice of online job seekers in China

Micro-level evidence on the migration decision and locational choice of high-skill workers remain scarce in developing economies. This paper studies whether high-skill individuals in China are attracted by cities’ human capital when choosing workplaces. Using over 50,000 resumes of online job seekers from a leading recruitment website, and by estimating a conditional logit model, we find that human capital at the city level plays a prominent role in determining the preferred workplace of high-skill workers. We further show that a city’s human capital is particularly attractive to better-educated individuals, new college graduates, and job seekers who intend to relocate to another city of higher economic hierarchy. We also discuss the role of agglomeration economies and spatial sorting in shaping the agglomerative behaviors of high-skill workers. •We inspect the city choice behavior of high-skill workers using resume data from online job seekers in China.•Educated workers are strongly attracted by human capital level at preferred workplace.•Effects of human capital are heterogeneous among job seekers.•Sorting by personal ability, the Jacobs externalities, and thickness of labor market are potential mechanisms.