Labor Economics of Migrant Workers' Transition
China News Weekly reporter/Zhao Yiwei
Published in the 957th issue of China News Weekly on July 7, 2020
Gao Zhixiao, from a rural village in Guyuan, northwestern China, wearing a helmet and mask, and a yellow coat straddling an electric car, appeared on the cover of the March epidemic issue of Time magazine in the United States. The reason why Gao Zhixiao attracted the attention of this international magazine was that "when the world stopped", he and his 3 million takeaway colleagues still gallop in the streets of Beijing, supporting people's daily lives. At the same time, American delivery workers are asking for paid leave to avoid the new crown virus.
Before becoming a rider, Gao Zhixiao, 32, had been in Beijing for many years. He has worked in restaurants, shopping malls, security, and express delivery. After failing to start a restaurant recently, he became a takeaway again. It is the world's highest order volume in China's food delivery industry that motivates Gao Zhixiao's unremitting efforts.
In 2019, China's express delivery business totaled 63.52 billion pieces, business revenue reached 749.78 billion yuan, and the number of employees has exceeded 10 million. In the same "last mile" delivery end ecology, the food delivery industry has developed more rapidly. In 2019, the industry scale has reached 653.6 billion yuan, and the total number of delivery staff has exceeded 7 million.
The epidemic has further accelerated the flow of labor between industries. Since late January this year, Meituan and Ele.me have added more than 2 million takeaway riders, of which nearly 30% are from manufacturing workers, and over 80% are young people under 40. Twenty or thirty years ago, "going to work in factories in coastal areas" was still the first choice for countless unemployed young people in the mainland. Now, delivering express delivery and food delivery to big cities is becoming a priority career option for more and more young people.
China's rapidly growing express delivery industry, like a rapidly expanding sponge, is absorbing more and more young laborers. The “wage earners” who used to be busy on the production line of the factory have created the economic miracle of China’s sustained rapid growth; now the various riders of Mercedes-Benz on the urban capillary distribution lines are also regarded as China’s emerging e-commerce One of the signs that the economy leads the global trend. But in essence, the transfer of this labor force is essentially a shift from the low-end processing and manufacturing industry in the past to the same relatively low-end express delivery industry in the service industry.
The outlet of the times
In April of this year, the 22-year-old Miao Sen finally plucked up the courage to quit his job as a loading and unloading worker in a factory that he found for him after quitting his parents’ entrustment relationship. He followed his fellow villager from his rural home in Hebei and came to Beijing. Enter a new life of 10,000".
Miao Sen entered the factory after he graduated from high school, and his constant monthly salary of 3,000 yuan for many years made him beyond boast of his peers. By Miao Sen's side, there are already more and more young people of his age and experience who have given up the career paths of farmers and workers of their parents to become couriers and takeaways. Those first-in-class brothers told Miao Sen that it's normal to earn 8,000 dollars a month by delivering food.
Entering the factory was the dream of a generation. In the 1980s, the clarion call for reform and opening up and invigorating the economy sounded all over the land of China. Farmers who once had their ancestors facing the loess and back to the sky suddenly had a new life expectancy: working in cities.
This is China's first batch of migrant workers and the main force in the era of China's "manufacturing factory". They rushed into the city with great vigor, and entered various foundries, textile factories, assembly lines, and construction sites. Everyone was proud of being workers in the factory and worked hard to play the countless "screws" in the huge industrial machinery, supporting Guangdong, Half of the manufacturing industry in Fujian, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.
Take Guangzhou, a strong manufacturing city, as an example. According to incomplete statistics, fewer than 20,000 migrant workers flowed into Guangzhou in 1976. Beginning in 1980, the number of peasants entering the city for migrant workers began to grow rapidly, and in 1987 it had soared to 450,000. That was the golden age of China's manufacturing industry. By 1988, the total number of migrant workers in China had reached about 120 million. The eastern coastal areas such as Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangsu and Zhejiang have become the most active areas for migrant workers.
"In the eyes of the previous generation, working in a factory is a good job." In Miao Sen's view, the career choices of their generation and their parents are completely different. Before changing careers, Miao Sen worked as a stevedore worker in a machinery factory in Chengde, Hebei. This was a job that relatives asked for help.
Miao Sen's father had gone out to work, his mother was farming at home, and his parents both had elementary school education. Before this year’s epidemic affected the factory’s work, his family had insisted that he were not allowed to change jobs. His parents believed in the stability of the factory’s work and had a natural sense of rejection of “unintelligible” industries such as express delivery and takeaway. In April of this year, Miao Sen quit his job and went to Beijing to work as a takeaway. It was the result of his failure to communicate with his family many times.
Time changes things easily. Most of the new generation of migrant workers born after 1980 are no longer willing to follow the career path of their parents. The "Migrant Workers Monitoring Report" issued by the National Bureau of Statistics shows that from 2008 to 2018, the average annual growth rate of migrant workers engaged in manufacturing in the total migrant workers was -2.84%. Although the total number of migrant workers is still increasing year by year, both the proportion of migrant workers in the total number of employment in the manufacturing industry and the proportion of migrant workers in the total are showing a downward trend.
From 2006 to 2014, the average age of migrant workers engaged in manufacturing rose from 26 to 34. Compared with their parents, the new generation of migrant workers basically have a junior high school or higher education, and their education level is significantly higher than that of their parents’ primary and junior high school education. A higher education level raises the standard of career selection. Compared with boring and repetitive assembly line workers, emerging positions in the life service industry that have developed rapidly in the past decade are becoming more favored new destinations for them.
The new generation of migrant workers yearn for big cities and emerging industries, but the general middle and high school education level is not enough to support them to enter the core positions in the Internet industry, and a large number of emerging basic and marginal positions in the Internet industry ecology have become them The career choice of most people. The express delivery and takeaway industries are just such a model. The expansion of the Internet ecology has put China's express delivery and food delivery industries on the highway of development.
Around 2000, China's private express delivery industry experienced rapid growth. After 2005, e-commerce entered a period of rapid development, and online shopping demand ushered in explosive growth, which once again drove the rapid growth of the private express industry. This year, the express delivery business volume brought by online shopping and retail accounted for more than half of the total express delivery business volume. Since then, express delivery has gradually become an important part of e-commerce services.
By 2010, China's express delivery industry had initially formed a parallel pattern of giants such as EMS, SF Express, JD.com, and "Four Access and One Delivery". With the help of e-commerce, in 2014, the annual business volume of China's express delivery exceeded 10 billion pieces for the first time, surpassing the United States to become the world's first. Since then, it has maintained an ultra-high growth rate of 10 billion pieces per year, and has firmly occupied the world for six consecutive years. The first position.
During this period, the food and beverage delivery industry began to sprout and built a huge industrial ecology at an alarming rate. In 2011, the three-year-old campus software Ele.me received its first million-dollar investment; in 2013 and 2014, Meituan Waimai and Baidu Waimai were established. Since then, China's food delivery industry has rapidly expanded at a rate of over 100 million new users every year, and established a duopoly pattern of Meituan and Ele.me in 2017. In 2019, the scale of China's food and beverage delivery industry reached 653.6 billion yuan, with about 460 million consumers, and the total number of delivery staff exceeded 7 million.
"The current employment situation has undergone fundamental changes." Zhang Zheng, a scholar at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management, pointed out in an interview with China News Weekly. "In the late 1980s, China's non-skilled labor market was oversupply, and after 2004, The number of young migrant workers in China has been declining, and the younger the number of migrant workers has decreased more. The overall supply and demand of migrant workers are balanced, but the supply of young migrant workers has exceeded demand."
Regardless of manufacturing or living services, young migrant workers under 40 are the most popular labor force. Today, the attractiveness of factories to young people has fallen far behind the emerging service industries such as express delivery and food delivery. On major recruitment websites, the age limit for recruiting workers in most factories is still stuck between 20 and 40, and the salary range is generally 4,000 to 7,000 yuan, including food and housing, and most of them are on a rotation system. The recruitment notice was hung up for a period of time, and the factory owners found that people of this age are not easy to recruit. These people are more willing to join the army of emerging industries such as express delivery and food delivery, and spend more free time in exchange for a monthly salary of more than 7,000 yuan.
According to data from Meituan Waimai and Ele.me, among the 4 million riders of Meituan Waimai in 2019, 83.7% of the riders in the 20 to 40-year-old age group are. Among the 3 million Ele.me riders, the average age is 31 years old, and the post-90s account for about 47%.
According to Miao Sen, who was born in 1998, the work experience of factory workers and delivery workers is completely different. Before that, Miao Sen worked as a loading and unloading worker in a suburban machinery factory, where the factory and dormitory were together. His daily work involves loading and unloading with trucks that are transported back and forth, and sometimes helping with packing and handling in the workshop. The boss says it’s "six days off and one day off", but he also works overtime continuously when he is busy.
"I stay in the factory every day, moving things are very tiring, and I have to be called to drink." Miao Sen said bluntly, "Who at our age would like this kind of work? There is not much money." Under the circumstances, the rider job seems to have the advantages of "free time" and "work more, get more", which is very attractive to Miao Sen, who used to work with irregular salary.
Income is the biggest factor that affects the desire for employment. According to the "2018 Food Delivery Staff Employment Report", in 2018, the average monthly salary of takeaway riders nationwide was around 7,750 yuan, and in Hangzhou, where demand is most prosperous, the average salary of riders reached 9,121 yuan.
In traditional manufacturing factories, it is a different story. Business owners will not spend 7,000 to 8,000 yuan in wage costs to recruit a large number of ordinary workers. According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, the average annual salary of employees in enterprises above designated size in the manufacturing industry in 2019 is 70,494 yuan, which is less than the absolute salary of the express delivery group.
This year's sudden new crown epidemic has cast a shadow over the manufacturing industry. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that from January to April 2020, the total profits of industrial enterprises above designated size nationwide fell by 27.4% year-on-year. Under the impact of the epidemic, the revenue efficiency of many factories has fallen sharply, and it is not realistic to increase labor costs.
“Migrant workers flow to the service industry in large numbers, and it should be blamed for the low wages in the manufacturing industry.” Zhang Zheng said bluntly, “Migrant workers are the supply side of the labor market. In order to reduce costs, manufacturing companies certainly hope that the wages are as low as possible. But migrant workers At the same time, it is also the demand side in the consumer goods and commercial housing market. If we want to expand the demand for the relevant market through urbanization and citizenization of migrant workers, we must first solve the problem of low income of migrant workers and inability to enter the city."
Robots crowd people out of the workshop
The younger generation no longer favors factories. In addition to the impact of factors such as salary and personal employment willingness, on the other hand, the increasing improvement of intelligent and automated equipment in manufacturing factories has fundamentally reduced the demand for ordinary workers in factories.
In Dongguan City, Guangdong Province, where garment processing plants are densely populated, automated production lines have almost become standard equipment in large-scale processing plants. Even smaller processing plants have mostly replaced manual packaging, cutting and other processes with automated equipment. .
"Now our factory production line has been basically fully automated, which can save about 20% of labor costs each year." Pan Jigang, vice president of human resources of the well-known underwear brand Metro Beauty Group, told China News Weekly, "On the clothing production line, cutting, cutting, The main links of sewing, testing, logistics, and standard parts assembly can basically be automated, with higher efficiency and lower cost."
Pan Jigang said frankly that the driving force for the purchase of automation equipment is precisely the rising labor costs in recent years. "The labor cost of front-line workers is increasing at an annual rate of 10%-45%. In addition, first-line workers are highly mobile and unstable. Training time and proficiency will also affect the labor cost of enterprises."
The automation of the apparel and textile industry is a microcosm of the production changes in the manufacturing industry. At Foxconn Group, the “king of foundry”, revenue has risen overall in the past decade, but the total number of global employees has dropped sharply from 1.2 million during the peak period to 660,000. In the automobile manufacturing industry, Shanghai GM’s Jinqiao plant, known as China’s most advanced manufacturing plant, replaced a large number of frontline workers with 386 robots controlled by more than a dozen technicians, and can co-produce 80 Cadillacs every day.
The Oxford Institute for Economic Research pointed out in the report "How Robots Change the World" released in June 2019 that the installation of a new robot will reduce 1.6 jobs. By 2030, global manufacturing employment will be reduced by 20 million.
As a country with a large population and a large manufacturing industry, China may face greater pressure on labor substitution. Qu Xiaobo, an associate researcher of the Institute of Population and Labor Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences mentioned in the "Report on China's Population and Labor Issues No. 20" that according to the research team’s survey of 2000 domestic enterprises, the ordinary labor force in the manufacturing industry brought about by the application of new technologies The job replacement rate was 19.6%.
With technological iterations, takeaways have become one of the main choices for domestic manufacturing workers to switch jobs, and takeaways whose workers have switched jobs have become the mainstream of the industry. The data shows that among the 3 million riders of Ele.me, 15% of the takeaway riders are workers, which account for the highest proportion. 27.2% of Meituan's 1 million new takeaway riders during the epidemic came from manufacturing companies, which also accounted for the highest proportion.
Faced with this situation, "Glass King" Cao Dewang once bombarded: "At present, young people would rather be property security, rather than go to the factory, rather than go to the factory. This is the current domestic manufacturing dilemma, young people can not always Go take out!"
Pan Jigang also found that although the "labor shortage" of general workers has almost disappeared, the corresponding senior technicians are still scarce, especially for some professional senior technicians, the market salary has been raised to more than 10,000 yuan, and there are still few applicants.
Chen Bin, a 33-year-old delivery worker who has been engaged in food delivery for nearly two years, was a painter at an automobile factory in Baoding, Hebei. He was not from a professional class. He was first brought into the industry by a master, and later in an automobile factory. After four years of work, his monthly salary rose from 3500 yuan to about 5,000 yuan.
"Wages are rising slowly, and the money is not enough." In July 2018, Chen Bin came to Beijing to work as a delivery worker. His monthly income once maintained between 8,000 yuan and 10,000 yuan. He was very satisfied. "This is equivalent to our local 4S shop. The income of senior auto repair technicians."
A senior automobile electromechanical maintenance technician with a national first-level certificate was once a high-paying job in Chen Bin's eyes. However, due to the threshold of theoretical knowledge, skill certificates, and work experience, Chen Bin, a junior high school student, did not choose this path. Since the resumption of work this year, Chen Bin’s income from food delivery has never returned to its previous peak. The high cost of living in Beijing began to form pressure, and Chen Bin had the idea of going back to his hometown. “Going back is to continue working, but you still have to learn skills. If you have skills, you don’t have to worry about eating.”
In fact, the situation of easy recruitment of general workers in the manufacturing industry and scarcity of senior skilled workers has existed for a long time. In the labor market, job offer ratio refers to the ratio of the number of effective demand to the number of effective job applicants in a statistical period. Take Jiangsu, a large manufacturing province, as an example. In recent years, the job offer rate of skilled workers in this province has been above 1.5, and the job offer rate of senior skilled workers has even reached a level above 2. This means that, on average, a senior technician has more than two positions to choose from, which is much higher than the average job offer rate of about 1. "Today, the shortage of senior skilled workers has gradually spread from the eastern coastal areas to the central and western regions, changing from seasonality to recurring, and the contradiction between supply and demand is prominent." said Sun Wenkai, a researcher at the National Institute of Development and Strategy at Renmin University of China.
Affected by the epidemic, demand in the labor market has dropped significantly this year. But there is still a shortage of highly skilled personnel. The relevant data for the first quarter of 2020 released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security shows that despite the combined effects of seasonal factors and the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the market employment demand and the number of job applicants have shrunk year-on-year, but the number of job vacancies and job applicants of various technical levels or professional titles The ratios are all greater than 2.0.
After the wave of technical unemployment, the future employment threshold will increase, and knowledge-based and skilled labor will become the mainstream. "Before 2010, as long as you are a laborer, you can find a job. But not anymore. The demand for labor-intensive jobs in traditional manufacturing will become smaller and smaller." Qu Xiaobo said bluntly, "In the future, whether it is manufacturing or service industries, knowledge and skills The demand for qualified talents will increase, and the income gap with labor-intensive jobs will further widen."
Despite this, no matter how the enterprise suffers from the "skills shortage", how can all sectors of society call for attention to vocational and technical education, and relatively high-income skilled workers, even senior skilled workers, are still difficult to become the priority career options for young people. From the perspective of a basic-level worker, under roughly the same salary range, compared to express delivery workers who can enter the industry quickly, they spend higher training costs and take greater risks to learn senior skilled workers, which is a higher input-output ratio. Lower.
Although companies are willing to "pay more" to senior skilled workers in terms of wages and benefits, they are even willing to go to the labor market to dig people at a high price. "But there are prerequisites for companies to recruit such highly paid skilled workers." Zhang Zheng pointed out that in a nutshell, companies pursue "flexible employment" and skilled workers pursue career stability.
As the technology learned by senior technicians is usually dedicated to a certain industry and a certain type of work, the higher the technical level, the stronger the specificity of the technology. If a technician changes his career, all or most of the skills he has acquired after years of study and work will be scrapped. Therefore, when deciding whether to learn a certain technology, the salary and stability of the counterpart job have become the key factors they consider. Take the polishing of the smartphone screen as an example. In the past, the grinding and polishing of mobile phone screen glass required workers. This skill requires at least three years of study and training to reach the level of advanced technicians. However, as the demand for smart terminals exploded, automated mobile phone screen glass engraving machines began to spread in the panel production industry, quickly replacing traditional manual polishing positions.
Zhang Zheng also estimated the cost of training senior skilled workers, and concluded that even if the tuition fees of the technical school are fully subsidized by the government, if migrant workers want to earn back the money earned by the technical school, they must at least work in the industry after graduation from the technical school. Work for 8-10 years.
Under this circumstance, although the number of technical school enrollment is increasing, the number of technical school graduates who "change career after graduation" is also increasing. "The consequence of leaking the bucket to fetch water is that there are not enough technicians." Zhang Zheng said.
"In fact, the replacement of people by machines does not mean complete job losses." Qu Xiaobo told China News Weekly, "Technology will replace some traditional low-skilled jobs, and it will also create a number of new technical positions such as human-machine collaboration. Taking the Gree Group’s large-scale job transfer training in 2018 as an example, retraining and re-training workers whose positions have been replaced can achieve neither large-scale layoffs but also a significant increase in production efficiency.”
"If an enterprise requires employees to continuously improve their technical level, on the other hand it spends vigorously on-the-job training for technicians and provides them with long-term stable jobs in the bank. Stable jobs, low incomes, and inability to retain employees will also arise. It doesn't exist anymore." Zhang Zheng said bluntly, "But in fact, not all manufacturing companies can follow this path."
"On the whole, the employment of young laborers in China's manufacturing industry is indeed shrinking, and the emerging service industry under the new economy is more popular with young people." Sun Wenkai told China News Weekly, "On the one hand, the income gap is widening. On the other hand, young people with a higher level of education pay more attention to factors such as cost-effectiveness of work, job respect, and working environment. If factories want to retain young people, they need to consider the improvement of these factors."
Where is the future of takeaway
Within two months of changing careers, Miao Sen, a novice takeaway, did not get the legendary income of "a monthly income of over 10,000". He saw that there were more and more delivery staff at the take-out site, but one person received fewer and fewer orders every day.
Miao Sen realized from the conversations with other senior delivery staff on the site that the new rider team this year is growing at an unprecedented rate. Under the impact of the epidemic, the food delivery industry, which has almost no threshold, has become an important reservoir of employment. Food delivery has become the temporary career choice for many unemployed and unemployed youths with the lowest threshold and the fastest earning money.
"There are too many people and a few orders, so it's not enough." Miao Sen felt helpless. "The order volume just rose in May, and many part-time takeaways were added. They get an extra income when they come after work, but we are full-time. It can only rely on this, and many senior food delivery staff have not returned to last year's level."
On the other hand, the sharp drop in orders during the epidemic has also affected the pay of delivery workers. The first quarter 2020 financial report of Meituan showed that due to the closure of offline stores and the closure of communities, Meituan's food and beverage delivery revenue in the first quarter decreased by 11.4% year-on-year, with an average daily decline of 18.2% in order volume and total order volume by 46% year-on-year. By the beginning of May, although the volume of takeaway orders had recovered to 90% of the pre-epidemic level, after the second wave of outbreaks in mid-June, orders in many areas of Beijing dropped sharply.
In the situation where there are too many porridges, more and more people choose to take takeaways as part-time jobs. Platform data shows that among Meituan takeaway riders, nearly 60% of riders have a delivery time of less than 4 hours per day; among Ele.me riders, 56% of riders have a second job.
On the surface, the income level of the express delivery industry is not low, but the high wages actually come from high-intensity overtime work. A survey report of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences for the courier group pointed out that nearly half of the couriers work 10 to 12 hours a day. If the hourly wage is used as the standard, the average monthly income of the couriers is 4,859 yuan, and the hourly salary is only 23.9 yuan. Similar to the minimum wage level announced by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. The income of the delivery staff is already the highest level among the delivery workers.
But in fact, the salary of the delivery staff is completely dependent on the workload, and the more you work, the more you get. On average, the income constituted by a rake ranging from 5 to 8 yuan per order seems to be relatively high, but it is because of the lack of various social insurance contributions. "We don't have basic social security, so we can only make more money and plan for the future." A 37-year-old female takeaway told China News Weekly that many full-time takeaways are now waiting to take orders. Void does some online part-time jobs such as micro-business and praise.
"Takeaways are a platform type of employment, because they evaded social security contributions, they increased their income in disguise." Qu Xiaobo pointed out, "At present, the takeaways are still not a stable long-term job, with high mobility, and it is difficult to enter formal social insurance. In the system, and takeaway platforms generally only provide commercial accident insurance. This income structure determines that takeaways are not a long-term stable job."
The Academy of Social Sciences report pointed out that many young people do not regard express delivery as a long-term job due to complaints, disputes, lack of protection and professional development. 39% are employed for less than one year, 31.2% for one to two years, 12.1% for two to three years, 5.9% for five to six years, and 11.9% for more than seven years. Short-term employment characteristics are obvious.
In addition, age, income level, marriage and childbirth, physical health, etc. also have a significant impact on the occupational mobility of express delivery workers. In Zhang Zheng's view, the competition in the express delivery industry is becoming saturated, platform incentives are declining, and salaries are becoming normalized. "Whether it is now or in the future, the high salary of express delivery staff must come from more work."
Wang Yixuan, a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Social Sciences of Tsinghua University, pointed out in a survey of urban express brothers that the express brothers not only face greater life pressure in the city, but also endure prematurely stomach problems, lumbar muscle strain, rheumatic joint pain, etc. "Occupational Diseases".
Occupational mobility and returning home are the main channels for this group to improve the status quo. However, under the constraints of human capital today, it is difficult for express delivery staff with low education and professional skills to find jobs outside the express industry. In the survey conducted by Wang Yixuan's research group, nearly 68% of the courier brothers would choose to return to their hometown to start a business after a few years of work.
According to Chen Bin, a 33-year-old food delivery worker who has already married, returning home is the last way, but it is also the most realistic way. "Like me, someone who only has a junior high school education, no company in the city will want me." Chen Bin's helplessness and sadness were evident.
"Returning hometown is the choice of most people in this group." Zhang Zheng told China News Weekly, "The work load of express delivery staff is very large, the professional reputation is relatively low, and the complaint rate of work is high. Low recognition is a group with low integration in typical cities. Returning home after working for a period of time is a high probability choice."
However, even though machines have replaced the basic posts on the factory assembly line, they have not completely replaced the basic posts on the express delivery line. From express logistics to takeaway running errands, smart machines only control the warehousing and distribution links. The "last mile" on the distribution line and the face-to-face service still need to rely on labor. Therefore, Zhang Zheng believes, “Although express delivery staff are engaged in basic positions in the service industry, in the next ten years, such positions will not be replaced by machines. With the further development of e-commerce and online service industries, express delivery The demand for manpower in the food delivery industry will continue to grow."
At present, the secondary industry is still an important pillar of China's economy. In 2019, the output value of the tertiary industry in the United States accounted for 81% of the GDP, while the figure in China was 53.9%, which is equivalent to the level of the United States around 1947. In contrast, the producer service industry in the United States is more developed, with knowledge-intensive service industries such as finance, information technology, and real estate as the pillars of growth. In China, consumer service industries such as accommodation and catering, residents' services, and culture and entertainment occupy a dominant position, while technology-based services account for a relatively low proportion. Compared with the United States, China's consumer service industry is more labor-intensive and has lower unit labor productivity.
"China's service industry provides a large number of labor-intensive jobs. China's emerging service industry, including express delivery, etc., its online new economic situation has brought new models such as flexible employment and sharing economy, which has indeed increased by several million. The scale of employment. The epidemic has further accelerated this trend.” pointed out Sun Wenkai, a researcher at the National Institute of Development and Strategy, Renmin University of China.
“In the future, China’s service industry’s value-added proportion and employment share will continue to increase steadily, with greater potential for growth. This is an irreversible trend and an inevitable result of economic development.” Sun Wenkai said, but a cruel reality will be, "The income gap between high-end knowledge-based jobs and low-end labor-intensive jobs in the service industry will further widen."
Where is the courier's takeaway tomorrow? For the more than 2 million new take-out riders during the epidemic, taking advantage of the recovery of the take-out industry, getting as much cash flow as possible and saving some money to return home may be the most practical way to survive right now.
"Although I don't have a monthly income of more than 10,000 yuan, I am at least a little more in the factory than before." When it comes to the future, the 22-year-old Miao Sen has no clear career plan, and his goal is the same as the fellow who brought him into the industry: " Do it first, save some money, and then go back to my hometown to open a small shop."
(At the request of the interviewee, Miao Sen and Chen Bin in the text are pseudonyms)
China News Weekly, Issue 27, 2020
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