This paper measures employment elasticity of 286 Chinese prefecture-level cities by using arc elasticity，analyzes the employment absorbance capacity difference in different cities from such two levels as city size and urban regions，further examines whether high employment elasticity is at the price of sacrificing urban labor productivity and studies the influential factors of employment elasticity difference in different cities，and the research results show that there is significant problem in the imbalance of employment absorbance capacity in Chinese cities，that there is in general relatively higher employment elasticity in the cities with larger scale and in eastern cities，that the employment elasticity of the tertiary industry in all kinds of cities is generally higher，that the cities with larger scale and in east part of China have higher labor productivity in absolute number，however，there is substituting relationship between the growth of urban employment absorbance capacity and urban production efficiency，that the stronger employment absorbance capacity of the cities with larger scale depends on many factors such as industrializing development stage， urban employment structure，urbanization process，infrastructure and public service level，urban private and foreign economy development level and so on.