As a pilot initiative of an important industrial policy, the Pilot Free Trade Zone (PFTZ) provides a valuable opportunity to examine its impact on the labor market. This paper evaluates the employment effects of PFTZs using a staggered Difference-in-Differences (DID) approach, based on data from 257 prefecture-level cities in China from 2010 to 2019. The results show that the establishment of PFTZs has significantly promoted employment growth, with varying effects across different batches of PFTZs. Among them, the Shanghai PFTZ remains the core of this policy experiment. Additionally, the implementation of PFTZs has led to significant shifts in employment structure, characterized by a decline in secondary sector employment and an increase in tertiary sector employment. Further analysis reveals that employment growth is particularly notable in sub-sectors such as information and computer services, public administration, and environmental utilities. Overall, our findings demonstrate the positive role of government-led industrial policies in promoting economic development and provide valuable insights for future policy design. Policy evaluation, labor, employment, staggered Difference-in-Differences, heterogeneity analysis