The "industry and labour transfer" strategy is being implemented in Guangdong Province, China, and the labour transfer in less-developed mountainous areas in Guangdong will face a new challenge. Taking Meizhou City as an example, the paper studies the evolution and coordination characteristic of industrial and employment structure, and analyzes the labour transfer characteristic under the background, using the methods of industrial structure deviation degree and cooperative index. The results showed that, 1) less-developed mountainous area should develop industry transfer and labour transfer at the same time; 2) less-developed area should accelerate the labour transfer while taking the industry transfer; 3) labour migration, labour local transfer and labour return are the new labour transfer modes; and 4) it is helpful to improve the labour transfer ability and strengthen the labour transfer attraction for speeding up the labour transfer in less-developed mountainous area.