This paper constructed a tourism employment model built on classical labor economic model (Pissarides, 1990). The model revealed that the tourism employment does not always increase accordingly with the growth of tourism economy. To test the propositions, an empiric test using a 17-year time series data was performed through a VAR model. The results indicated that tourism employment in China was mainly driven by the development of tourism-related industries. The result also showed that the progress of technology imposes a slight negative effect on the tourism employment in China.