Abstract: How to promote the employment of local rural labor force while realizing the ecological protection and green development in key ecological function areas is one of the core issues of China's public policies in recent years. Based on the perspective of policy instruments, this paper analyzed 89 policy texts from 2000 to 2022 involving rural labor force employment promotion in key ecological function areas. It is found that the relevant employment promotion policies are scattered in poverty alleviation policies, ecological compensation policies and ecological migration policies. There is still a lack of targeted policies to address the special difficulties of employment in key ecological function zones. Meanwhile, the structure of existing policy instruments is found to be unbalanced, and the supply-oriented and environmental policies aiming at improving the employability of rural labor force and improving the labor market environment are relatively insufficient. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, it is necessary to strengthen the targeted policies for the special challenges faced by the employment of rural labor force in key ecological function areas, and focus the policy instruments on supply-oriented policies and environmental policies, so as to promote more adequate and higher quality employment in the targeted areas.