This study uses multi-period national representative rural survey data to analyze the situation of the rural labor market in China from the perspective of the off-farm employment adequacy of rural labor. We find that: (1) The adequacy of off-farm employment in rural labor is gradually increasing. The off-farm employment of the male labor force is more adequate than that of the female labor force. However，the length of off-farm employment work of female labor is growing much faster than that of male labor. At the same time，the extent of the improvement of the sufficiency of the young labor force’s off-fam employment is higher than that of the older labor force. The higher the level of education，the higher the employment adequacy of off-farm employment. (2) Education has been an important driving force for improving the employment adequacy of rural labor employment from 2000 to 2015，and education has had a greater impact on improving the off-farm employment adequacy of female labor. (3) Overtime labor and underemployment coexist in the rural labor market，and education has a positive effect on the overtime work in the sense of the total amount of non-agricultural work in each year of rural labor. The original linear relationship between education and the length of rural labor employment has gradually changed to the inverted U-shaped relationship，and the turning point is gradually moving forward.

Keywords: Rural labor force; Employment adequacy; Education; Overtime work

Corresponding author: Wang Weidong, wangwd.15b@igsnrr.ac.cn