China’s high-quality development faces double pressure of environment and employment and it is necessary to deeply study the influence of environment regulation on employment. Based on the quasi-natural experiment of the CO2 emission control pilot policy, by using propensity scores matching method and difference-in-difference method to estimate the impact of carbon emission trading on the labor demand of the regulated enterprises and its possible path, the analysis shows that carbon emission trading significantly decreases the amount of industrial carbon emission and has obviously positive influence on the labor demand of regulated firms, and that boosting production scale enlargement is one of effective paths of the positive effect of carbon emission trading on the labor demand of the enterprises. Emission right trading can realize the “double dividend” of the environment and employment, thus, governments should actively promote the implementation and popularization of market-oriented environment regulation, continuously perfect market mechanism, and realize double objectives of “improving environment” and “boosting employment” by effectively implementing market-oriented environmental regulation.