Abstract: The transfer of farmers to off-farm employment is considered to be the main driving force of farmland transfer. However, the farmland transfer rate still remains stagnant in the case of non-agricultural employment is very common. The development of agricultural production service outsourcing affects the driving effect of non-agricultural employment on farmland transfer by changing the opportunity cost of farmers engaged in agriculture. Based on the micro-survey data of farmers' households of Hubei province in 2018, we empirically tested the influence of off-farm employment on farmland circulation and the intermediary role of outsourcing services in agricultural production by using the binary discrete model and the intermediary effect model. The results showed that: (1) Non-agricultural employment is conducive to increasing the outsourcing of agricultural production services, thus promoting the farmers to rented out their agricultural lands and inhibiting the transfer of agricultural lands. (2) The outsourcing of agricultural production services inhibits the transfer of agricultural land and promotes the rented of agricultural land. (3) If the influence of agricultural production service outsourcing is ignored, it will be overestimated for both the positive effect and the negative effect of off-farm employment on farmland transfer market supply and demand. These can provide an important explanation for the contradiction between the high degree of off-farm employment of farmers and the low rate of farmland transfer in reality. Agricultural production service outsourcing not only can optimize the allocation of rural labor resources, but also reshape the supply and demand structure of the farmland transfer market in China.