Jobs created in digital economy favored by more young Chinese
By Li Xinping, People’s Daily
China’s booming digital economy has incubated many
Internet-based occupations in recent years. These jobs, featuring flexible
working hours and interesting duties, are attracting more and more young
people.
In 2018, a total of 191 million Chinese worked in the
digital economy sector, accounting for 24.6 percent of the country’s employed
population, according to a 2019 white paper on the development and employment
of China’s digital economy released by China Academy of Information and
Communications Technology (CAICT).
Yu Pei is one of the many who joined the digital economy.
After graduating from a national key university, she started working for a
we-media company, writing articles and designing activities at home.
Li Wencan, who was once a fitness coach at a gym, also quit
his job and started working online - he makes tutorial workout videos for
online platforms and writes fitness articles for knowledge-sharing websites. Besides,
he is also a counselor of a fitness app who answers users’questions about
fitness.
“I also receive orders on mobile applications from users who
need private fitness instruction services. It takes me 2 to 3 hours a week,” Li
introduced.
Li is quite pleased with his current income. “I make about
15,000 yuan (about $2,153.32) per month, not a penny less than how much I
earned from the gym, but feel much freer, and I don’t have pressure from
selling fitness classes,” Li said.
After becoming a food blogger of some repute on a online
platform, Wen Sisi quit her job and started working full-time on the platform.
“What I do every day is making baking and pastry videos and
writing cooking tips,” said Wen, who had just released baking courses on the
platform and sees great prospects in her new profession.
There are more emerging occupations in China, such as
private travel routes planner, writers for online media, and online marketing
personnel. All these jobs are created during the digital transformation of the
traditional service industry.
“The tertiary industry features high transaction cost, low
proportion of fix assets, and low technological intensity, which makes it
easier to achieve digital transformation, and that'’s how the massive
Internet-based jobs have been created,” said Yu Xiaohui, vice president of
CAICT.
The service sector is what makes the digital economy
job-rich, said Yu, noting that China had more than 1.3 million jobs related to
digital transformation of the service sector in 2018. This figure accounted for
37.2 percent of the total jobs in the sector, 4 percentage points higher from
the previous year.
Tertiary industry’s digital transformation has restructured
and incubated new models of business like Internet-based platform economy and
sharing economy, among which platform economy has shown the best performance
and become a new engine for boosting entrepreneurship and employment, said Zhou
Guangsu, associate professor with School of Labor and Human Resources of Renmin
University of China.
Apart from offering full-time jobs, online occupations also
serve as an additional source of income for young Chinese. According to
research data from Chinese online job-hunting platform Zhaopin.com, 8.2 percent
of Chinese laborers earned extra income from part-time jobs in the first half
of 2019.
“Digital economy is restructuring our patterns of employment,”
said Yu, explaining that individuals are now able to conduct business
activities without entering traditional enterprises as they have access to
resources such as market, R&D and production through Internet information
technologies and Internet platforms.
Accordingly, the forms of employment are becoming flexible
and diverse, and new types of jobs are emerging rapidly such as starting
businesses, freelance work, and part-time jobs, Yu added.
Digital economy has caused four major changes in flexible
employment in China, according to Yu.
The first change is the explosive growth in employment
figures. Jobs created by digital economy have changed from supplementary to an
important part of the employment market.
“Today, with the development of new forms and new models of
business such as online shopping and sharing economy, the number of people who
choose flexible employment has risen rapidly, becoming an important component
of China’s employment market,” said Yu.
Secondly, these jobs are expanding rapidly from certain
industries to a wide range of occupations. Apart from commerce and trade, they
also exist in logistics and live streaming.
Thirdly, flexible employment has expanded from lower-tier
jobs to higher-tier jobs. More and more people with higher educational
backgrounds and human capital are joining in the sector, especially in the
knowledge-sharing industry.
Besides, the competitiveness of flexible employment has
risen greatly in China, as it is no longer a backup plan, but a magnet for job
seekers.
Today, with the help of technologies and platforms, people
who choose flexible employment are able to give play to their strengths in more
areas, while enjoying greater pleasure and fulfillment from putting into
practice their expertise in personalized ways.
On Dec.22, 2019, a webcast host shows imported commodities
at Yiwu Imported Commodities Incubator Zone in east China’s Zhejiang
Province through live streaming.
Jobs created in digital economy favored by more young Chinese
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