Career escort is popular and service to be regulated
Our reporter Sun Qiru
In the high-speed urban life, the company of relatives often becomes a "scarce item."
Come to feed pets, accompany children to cram schools, travel with the elderly... Professional escorts such as pet masters and parent-child escorts have gradually become emerging professions, but the service standards and levels need to be regulated.
The rise of new professions such as professional companions
Putting on the blue disposable shoe covers and wearing disposable gloves, Zhou Ting carefully opened the door to a slit, stepped in expertly and quickly closed it, and whispered, "Hello, Charlie?" The door flees in a flash. It is a gray and white male fold-eared cat.
Changing the water, feeding, cleaning the cat litter, grooming the cat... She drove a live video broadcast with the cat owner who was away on business until she checked the doors and windows, and left with the collected garbage, and rushed to the next house.
Zhou Ting is a professional pet accompaniment teacher, and her daily work is to help others "walking cats and dogs".
"Pet companionship has also become popular in recent years. Owners work overtime, travel on business, return to their hometown or travel, and are afraid of putting kittens and puppies in pet shops where they are unfamiliar, so they choose to ask the pet master to take care of them regularly." Zhou Ting said.
On some recruitment platforms, the number of "accompaniment" positions held by Zhou Ting is continuously increasing.
Similarly, there are various needs such as accompany children to cram school, accompany the elderly, accompany travel, and accompany running.
The data shows that there are already more than 20,000 related positions on only one platform that BOSS directly hires.
Research data from the BOSS Direct Employment Research Institute shows that child companionship, elderly companionship, and pet companionship-related positions are mainly distributed in first-tier and new-tier cities with higher consumption levels and fast-paced life.
Among them, more than 80% of elderly companionship-related jobs are located in first-tier or new first-tier cities, while the sinking trend of child companionship-related jobs is the most obvious, with second-tier and lower cities accounting for more than 48%.
Accompanying huge economic needs
As early as 2000, the classic line of Zhao Benshan and Song Dandan's Spring Festival Gala sketch "Hourly Workers" "accompany me ten dollars more", revealed the value of "accompaniment" as a scarce item.
Nowadays, prices are soaring. Back then, Aunt Baiyun came to "talk, chat, accompany chattering" and "40 yuan per hour". The charging standard has been raised to 100 yuan and people have even raised a resounding voice specifically for this promising blue ocean of the market. The name-Accompanying Economy.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, China's single population reached 260 million in 2019, and 80 million people lived alone. It is expected that this number will rise to 92 million in 2021.
A consumer survey of singles in China showed that 57.69% of people said they would spend money to resolve loneliness. Among them, more than 40% would spend about 1,000 to 3,000 yuan per month for this, and 34% would spend about it. 3000 yuan to 5000 yuan.
If the companionship for pets is still a luxury item in emotional consumption, under the social anxiety caused by the phenomenon of "996", "chicken baby", and aging, the companionship of parents and children and the companionship of the elderly have become a rigid need.
"Everyone knows that the best love for a child is companionship, but every day the child does not wake up at get off work, and the child falls asleep after work, how to accompany it? Resign?" Li Qing, an employee of an Internet company in Houchang Village, Beijing, was confused. There is broad resonance in related topics on social media.
In fact, accompany services for the elderly and children have higher professional thresholds.
Taking care of the elderly with dementia and illness requires a certain amount of medical and psychological knowledge, as well as great patience; to accompany children in the compulsory education stage, they must also have the ability to tutor homework.
“It’s not easy to find the ideal escort. In many cases, you have to lower your expectations.” Ms. Jiang, who has experienced the escort service for the elderly, said that full-time nanny is expensive and unreasonable, so she chooses to come to accompany, chat, and accompany. More and more people are providing temporary and short-term services such as hospitals.
The development of emerging business formats still needs to be regulated
From one-person food, mini home appliances, mini KTV, to intelligent companion robots, to various applications that focus on social interaction with strangers, a large number of young people living alone have created a number of entrepreneurial outlets in sub-sectors; an empty nest of about 118 million The elderly's strong demand for spiritual comfort is giving birth to the prosperity of the silver-haired economic care, companionship, and nursing market; the companionship service in the parent-child market continues to extend to the scenes of companionship, companionship, etc.... Someone has early smelled the business opportunity of companionship economy.
Reporters have seen on platforms such as BOSS Direct Employment and Zhaopin Recruitment that the salary of "learning companions" and "parent-child companions" ranges from 4,000 yuan to nearly 10,000 yuan.
However, it is not easy to get rich through such non-fixed positions. Most of the related positions such as companionship of children and the companionship of the elderly are still below 5,000 yuan a month.
"Demand is very high, but it is difficult to recruit talents in this field. The requirements are not low but the salary is not high. Many of our platforms are part-time, but the corresponding training and assessment standards are the same as full-time." A pet headquartered in Shanghai The person in charge of recruitment on the service online platform said.
Industry insiders believe that under the deployment of economic leverage, the demand for related positions will force wages to rise in the future.
At the same time, like many new things, in the emerging accompany economy, in addition to lack of talents, there are also problems of lack of regulations and standards, and even gray areas. Consumers buy escorts, escorts, and pretend to be males through informal channels. There have been disputes in services such as his girlfriend.
The relevant person in charge of the research institute directly hired by BOSS analyzed that with the development of the industry and the continuous improvement of relevant laws and regulations, the professionalization of "accompaniment teachers" is inevitable for social development.