We explore workers’ valuation of job flexibility using a field experiment conducted on a Chinese job board. Our experimental job ads differ randomly in offering jobs that are flexible regarding when (time flexibility) or where (place flexibility) one works and in offering different salaries. Application rates are higher for flexible jobs conditional on the salary offered, providing evidence that workers value job flexibility. Moreover, under some plausible conditions our evidence is informative about job seekers’ willingness to pay for flexible jobs of the types offered in the experiment and points to fairly high valuation of the most flexible jobs.

China shifted its controversial one-child policy (1979–2015) to a two-child policy in 2016. We take advantage of this unexpected policy change and the heterogeneities in the prechange environment to investigate labor market discrimination against expected family responsibilities. In a two-wave correspondence study before and after the policy change, we sent 8,848 fictitious resumes with ages 22–29 in response to online job advertisements. Their gender and only-child/siblinged status were systematically varied. We find that women—but not men—are subject to labor market discrimination for expected family responsibilities. This discrimination worsens with the increase in women’s reproductive age.