Author: Huang Qiong
Taking care of the baby, cooking and cleaning, Sister Hua successfully transitioned from a restaurant owner to a live-in nanny in August this year.
"The monthly salary is 9,500 yuan, including food and lodging, and 4 days off a month." Sister Hua said, "I can't be a boss at my age, and I can still earn nearly 10,000 yuan a month, which is very satisfying."
In 2013, Sister Hua opened a beef rice restaurant in Quanzhou, Fujian Province.
Braised beef, beef tendon, beef brisket, beef balls, beef soup, and beef bone hot pot... All the meat dishes in the store are prepared by Sister Hua, and the taste is also highly praised by diners.
It's a pity that in the second year of the epidemic, Sister Hua's beef restaurant can only maintain a balance of expenses.
In August of this year, Sister Hua started to close the small restaurant.
During the transition, Sister Hua saw an opportunity in the housekeeping industry.
Finally, under the introduction of a senior housekeeping trainer in Shenzhen, Lan Ni, Hua Jie successfully took the order.
Lan Ni told Yicai.com that she cooks delicious food, has experience in the service industry, and has life in her eyes. She is very employable in the current housekeeping market, with a salary of nearly 10,000 yuan.
And if you have professional certificates such as domestic service technicians, maternal and child care technicians, postpartum care technicians, etc., and have rich experience, the salary can reach tens of thousands of yuan per month.
"At present, such high-end housekeeping talents are still very scarce in the market, especially maternal and child nurses. The salary in the confinement center is generally not less than 30,000 yuan per month." Lan Ni said that the average family finds a live-in aunt, As far as Shenzhen is concerned, the salary is generally 6,000 to 10,000 yuan.
With the miniaturization of families in Chinese society and the accelerated aging of the population, coupled with the implementation of the two-child policy and the three-child policy, a large amount of potential demand for domestic services has been created.
The market size of China's domestic service industry has grown rapidly.
Data from iiMedia Research shows that from 2015 to 2020, the market size of China's domestic service industry has grown steadily year by year, reaching 878.2 billion yuan in 2020, a year-on-year increase of about 26.0%.
In 2021, the data has increased to 1.0149 trillion yuan, and the size of the housekeeping market is expected to reach 1.089 trillion yuan in 2022.
Under the trillion-dollar market scale, there is still a huge talent gap in the housekeeping industry.
According to the estimates of the Ministry of Commerce, my country's domestic service industry has more than 30 million employees and has become an important employment channel.
With the growing demand for housekeeping, the domestic service industry in my country has a service gap of more than 20 million people.
Professionalism and Prejudice
Unlike Sister Hua's neat transformation, despite the considerable remuneration, the students majoring in home economics after "00" are still bound by inherent concepts and are not enthusiastic.
Since 2019, the state has issued a series of policies to support the development of home economics vocational education.
For example, in June 2019, the "Opinions on Promoting the Quality and Expansion of the Domestic Service Industry" issued by the General Office of the State Council stated that, in principle, each province should have at least one undergraduate college and several vocational colleges offering majors related to domestic service; for example, In the fourteen five-year plans for national economic and social development, it is pointed out that the construction and development of service industries such as domestic and elderly care should be accelerated.
According to incomplete statistics, as of mid-2020, a total of 122 colleges and universities across the country have opened 125 professional-level majors in domestic service and management, including 10 general undergraduate colleges, 2 vocational undergraduate pilot colleges, and higher vocational colleges. There are 110 colleges and universities; including 4 higher vocational colleges that have entered the ranks of the national double-high plan construction units, and 2 colleges that have been selected as national backbone majors.
But as of the first half of 2021, there are only 1,344 students in the national politics major, which means that each school has fewer than 20 students on average.
In September this year, a vocational college in Jiangxi also welcomed the first batch of freshmen majoring in home economics.
Mr. Kong, who is in charge of the career planning and home economics introduction courses for students of this major, told the First Financial Reporter that there are more than 20 students in a class of home economics major, and more than 90% of them are transferred, not a voluntary major.
According to Mr. Kong, when they first entered the school, the first impression of students facing this major was that they would graduate to be babysitters, that the job value was not high, and that they were disliked by relatives and friends.
"When I gave them the first career planning class, many students expressed their desire to change majors. But in fact, this major is not the 'nanny' that everyone generally thinks, and we are also actively guiding students so that they can go out of majors in the home economics industry. The way of transformation." Teacher Kong said.
Home economics is not something that can be summed up by the word "nanny".
For example, since the concept of "Duan She Li" was introduced into China in 2013, it has quickly become a popular online philosophy label.
Numerous occupations such as practice groups, storage organizers, and sundry management consultants have begun to emerge and gradually become popular.
At this level, housekeeping has evolved into a metaphysical philosophy and an emerging employment direction.
Bai Xiaoyong of Beijing Bosheng Law Firm believes that people's secular prejudice against the housekeeping industry is one of the reasons for the shortage of housekeeping talents.
With the improvement of social and economic level, highly educated housekeeping talents are in demand. Elderly care institutions, social security departments, kindergartens, and welfare institutions for the disabled all need educated talents in the housekeeping industry. There are a wide range of employment channels. It is necessary to let the new generation "00" Post "home economics graduates correctly recognize the importance of the home economics profession.
High-paying and difficult to hire domestic talents
Zhu Zhiqiang, general manager of Shenzhen Liande-Chinese Training School, said in an interview with a reporter from China Business News that he is currently preparing to start training related businesses for domestic economics.
According to Zhu Zhiqiang, the training of housekeeping skills mainly focuses on four aspects: housekeeping service, maternal and child care, old-age care and medical care.
But now there are irregularities in these aspects, including no service standards, no certificates, etc., and the market demand is very large, and the benefits are also rising.
"Especially for maternal and child care, the consumption in the confinement center is 30,000 to 100,000 yuan per month, and it also costs 10,000 to 30,000 yuan per month to ask a confinement maid for home service." Zhu Zhiqiang said that Shenzhen's long-term care insurance will also be introduced soon. , while Shenzhen's long-term care needs for disabled people are around 200,000.
Zhu Zhiqiang said that traditional housekeeping does not require a high degree of education to provide services such as hygiene, housework, and cooking, but new needs such as maternal and child care, elderly care, and medical care are in urgent need of professionals - maternal and child care majors enter high-end confinement centers, and elderly care enter high-end care centers. Elderly care institutions, medical care into hospitals or nursing stations – there are talent gaps in these four areas in the current market.
Among them, old-age care and medical care are the most in short supply, mainly for long-term care insurance personnel who need to hold a certificate. Only now is the development of standard training and certification, and it will take time to spread it across the city.
From the perspective of population and family factors, the demand for housekeeping talents is increasing.
According to estimates, around 2035, the number of elderly people aged 60 and above in my country will exceed 400 million, accounting for more than 30% of the total population, entering a stage of severe aging.
By the end of 2021, the number of elderly people aged 60 and above in China will reach 267 million, accounting for 18.9% of the total population; the number of elderly people aged 65 and above will reach more than 200 million, accounting for 14.2% of the total population.
On September 20, Wang Haidong, director of the Department of Aging of the National Health and Medical Commission, said at a press conference that by around 2050, the size and proportion of my country's elderly population, the elderly dependency ratio and the social dependency ratio will reach their peaks one after another.
As the elderly population continues to increase and the degree of population aging continues to deepen, it brings challenges to the supply of public services and the sustainable development of the social security system.
The press conference also revealed that by the first quarter of 2022, there were 360,000 elderly care service institutions and facilities nationwide, with 8.126 million beds, nearly double the number of beds at the end of 2012.
At the same time, the continuous expansion of the domestic middle-income group and the upgrading of consumption concepts have provided the necessary social and economic conditions for the development of the housekeeping industry after the implementation of the "two-child and three-child policy".
According to statistics, in 2010, there were about 16.88 million households that had greater demand for housekeeping services, which increased to 34.18 million in 2016, and about 49.8 million in 2020.
How to fill the gap
Previously, in the quarterly shortage occupation list released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, domestic helpers appeared in the top ten of the list for many times, and the demand for talents was large.
Yu Miao, an Internet education expert and founder of Sulu Consulting, told Yicai.com that the solution to these problems depends not only on increasing the training of practitioners, but also on a more detailed and comprehensive upgrade of training objectives, training content, and management standards. It is also necessary to gradually introduce better-quality talents into this industry.
"The current demand for university education and jobs is actually somewhat derailed." Chen Li, a teacher majoring in home economics in a higher vocational college, believes that on the one hand, it is "difficult to recruit talents" for home economics enterprises, and on the other hand, it is "difficult to recruit students" for home economics majors in colleges and universities, but at the same time some schools There is still the problem of "difficulty in employment" for home economics graduates.
How to break through these layers of barriers?
Chen Li said that firstly, colleges and universities should actively connect with the job market in economically developed regions such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, and understand the organizational structure, operation status, and required professional skills of housekeeping enterprises; secondly, set up special features according to the needs of enterprises. The course takes high-end housekeepers as the main direction of talent training; the third is to do a good job of publicity and guidance to reduce students' prejudice against home economics.
Wang Peng, an associate professor at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, also told Yicai.com that to solve the problem of the domestic economic talent gap, first, from the education side, a more targeted talent training system must be introduced, such as apprenticeships to improve teaching quality and services. Second, from the perspective of industry publicity, the training period for talents needs to be moved forward, and publicity should be done even at the middle school stage, so that young people can face up to the housekeeping industry; Whether it is an institution or an individual, it needs to achieve development through industry standards.
At the same time, for housekeeping enterprises, Yu Miao suggested that housekeeping enterprises need to refine and deepen their business: platform-based enterprises should make the assessment and evaluation system scientific, applicable and transparent, so that practitioners can clearly grasp the clarity of consumer customers. , and have clear development goals and paths, so that consumer users (service procurement users) have a clearer and more comprehensive understanding of practitioners, and provide open and transparent information feedback channels; professional enterprises must have a clear and profound understanding of market demand , according to their own enterprise resource capabilities and development goals, do a good job of positioning and allocation, and constantly upgrade and iterate their own enterprise service capabilities according to market demand, to cultivate practitioners for the entire industry with skills and literacy that meet the market demand, or provide this industry with High-quality products for related business needs.
(At the request of the interviewee, Sister Hua, Lan Ni and Chen Li are pseudonyms)