Public expenditure can affect a country's human capital, technological level, resource allocation, and corporate competitiveness, thereby affecting a country's trade structure and international division of labor status. The paper analyzes the impact mechanism of public expenditure on international division of labor status, and introduces export technology complexity as a proxy variable for international division of labor status. Based on cross-border panel data from 21 countries from 2009 to 2019, the paper empirically studies the impact of public expenditure on international division of labor status. The research results indicate that, firstly, the expansion of a country's public expenditure scale can promote the complexity of export technology, thereby enhancing status of the country's international division of labor. Secondly, constructive expenditure, social security expenditure, and technology expenditure in public expenditure can significantly promote the increase in export technology complexity. The management expenditure in public expenditure will suppress the increase in export technology complexity. Based on this, in the future, China should appropriately expand the scale of public expenditure, optimize the structure of public expenditure, and improve the efficiency of public expenditure, in order to enhance the status of China's international division of labor.