Author: Wei Lan
Source: Zhenghe Island
Let's tell you a true story.
The protagonist of the story is called Zhang Ping, a native of Jingzhou, Hubei Province, in 82 years, who had worked in the factory of his hometown for more than ten years, more than 4,000 per month. In 2017, he came to Shenzhen and became a regular worker at Foxconn, and his monthly salary was more than 4,000, which was not much different from his hometown's income. Because the surrounding colleagues are running takeaways part-time, Zhang Ping also began to try to deliver takeaways part-time in the US group, and there was a period of time for full-time takeaway delivery.
In August, September and October of each year, in order to catch up with Apple's orders, Foxconn will recruit a large number of temporary workers, nearly 30 yuan per hour, and there are 700 or 8000 in a month, even higher than the regular wages. Zhang Ping will also choose to enter Foxconn at this time, and after the end of the three-month peak season, he will come out to run a single. Under normal circumstances, Zhang Ping runs a takeaway for about 9 hours, in the factory, he does not work overtime for 8 hours, and overtime, he works 10 hours.
Zhang Ping's son is 10 years old and about to go to school, and Zhang Ping's biggest wish now is to earn more money for his children to study well.
01, "migratory bird riders" has become a phenomenon
Why tell such a story?
Because in recent years, such a story is becoming a common phenomenon: "migratory bird riders" - riders from the factory, a large number of part-time delivery of takeaways, they switch back and forth between general workers and takeaway workers, and even couriers, online car drivers and other multiple identities, in the off-season of factory orders to engage in takeaway workers and other work, in the peak season of factory orders and then return to the factory, free choice, such as migratory birds migration.
Behind the phenomenon of "migratory bird riders", on the one hand, it reflects the epitome of socio-economic and industrial changes: with the development of the mobile Internet and the digital economy era, new business models have emerged, and new business models will inevitably spawn new jobs.
According to the "New Economy, New Employment - 2017 Didi Chuxing Platform Employment Research Report" released by Didi, a total of 21.078 million people have obtained income through the Didi platform in the past year, including chauffeurs, express car drivers, substitute drivers, and hitchhiking owners, equivalent to 6.2% of the employed people in the tertiary industry in the country in 2016.
It can be seen that the new forms of employment generated by the digital economy, such as takeaway workers, Didi drivers, and couriers, provide important impetus for "stable employment" and "ensuring people's livelihood".
On the other hand, the phenomenon of "migratory bird riders" also reflects the great potential for flexible employment in the era of the digital economy.
Compared with the simple and closed economic model of the industrial age, the digital economy breaks the boundaries of time and space, blurs the boundaries between industries, and forms a coordinated, open and multilateral economic model. New jobs have also emerged with the advancement of Internet technology and the development of the data economy in a de-employer and platform-based employment model.
According to data from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security in August 2021, the number of flexible employment personnel in China has reached about 200 million. According to the survey, some platform takeaway riders reached more than 4 million people; on some platforms, more than 1.6 million people engaged in anchors and related positions reached more than 1.6 million, an increase of nearly 3 times over the previous year.
According to the "2022 Blue Knight Development and Security Report" released by Ele.me recently, 40% of knights said that they have their own jobs, more free online time, order time, takeaway delivery has become a side business choice for new format workers.
Prior to this, the "2020 First Half of 2020 Rider Employment Report" released by Meituan showed that "part-time riders" has become a new trend in employment, and nearly 40% of riders have other occupations, including lawyers, dancers, directors, middle-level managers of enterprises, financial practitioners and other groups.
In addition, behind the phenomenon of "migratory bird riders", it can be found that the platform economy promotes the free flow of various elements in the market and realizes the optimal allocation of resources.
Like the "Great Migration of Animals" in East Africa, small individuals form a huge torrent of life, moving according to the seasons, forever seeking the land of abundant water and grass.
In a relatively competitive market, the choices made by individuals are often limited by limited information, but for individuals, they are local optimal solutions, and in fact, "migratory bird riders" have made screening and judgment.
There are also many people who say that the takeaway, express delivery, Didi and other industries are robbing people from the manufacturing industry, but this statement itself is too biased: Today, what China needs is to rely on "800 million shirts" for an airplane? Or is it that the country needs a large number of "specialized and specialized" enterprises to solve the problem of "card neck"?
According to CCTV Finance in 2019, it is expected that the gap of high-end technicians will reach 22 million in 2020. With the continuous advancement of digital technology in the mainland, while a higher number of middle- and high-skilled workers are put forward, a large number of labor-intensive enterprises will inevitably be replaced.
02, the importance of deterministic income
As a product of the Internet and digital economy era, the platform economy promotes the greater flow of resource elements, which is the flow of people and things, as well as the flow of people themselves. Compared with monotonous and repetitive mechanical work, people can make more free and autonomous career choices, and they are also forcing the manufacturing industry to transform into "automation" and "intelligence".
However, the platform economy can promote the free flow of factors, but it cannot avoid the impact of development changes in the overall environment, such as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on economic development.
There are now about 150 million market entities on the mainland, no matter how big or small, they need to have a better development environment to ensure that they can survive and develop well.
On February 18, the National Development and Reform Commission and 14 other departments issued the "Several Policies on Promoting the Recovery and Development of Difficult Industries in the Service Sector" (hereinafter referred to as the "Policy"), which is also based on this consideration.
The measures proposed in the "Policy" include inclusive relief support measures for the service industry, relief support measures for the catering industry, relief support measures for the retail industry, relief support measures for the tourism industry, relief support measures for the highway and waterway railway transportation industry, and accurate implementation of epidemic prevention and control measures and safeguard measures, involving rent, social security, loans and other aspects related to the survival and development of enterprises.
Obviously, behind the promulgation of the "Policy" is the consideration of the state to reduce market risks and build a better development environment. For individuals, there is a need for such a stable environment, which converts all uncertain risks into deterministic income.
Take the aforementioned "migratory bird riders", in addition to their own jobs, obtaining a certain income through part-time work has become the confidence for many people to settle down in the city. Entrepreneurial losers, Internet programmers, factory managers, logistics planners... Many white-collar workers have become takeaway brothers.
Zhou Jin, a post-00s generation from Linquan, Anhui Province, is currently working in a factory in Suzhou Industrial Park. The factory, which belongs to the Suzhou branch of one of the world's top notebook computer case manufacturing groups, once stated in the group's financial report, "In order to improve production efficiency and reduce its dependence on labor, it has continued to purchase production robots in the past few years to replace manual production." ”
This year, Zhou Jin inadvertently learned that many workers would go to run takeaways after work, and he also became a Meituan rider. Later, he learned that 72 percent of the part-time riders at his delivery site were nearby factory workers.
Some people have heavy family burdens, lack of money, work in the factory during the day, run a few hours after work at night; and some people are because of the off-season of the factory in March and April every year, the demand for labor is reduced, workers will find nearby takeaway stations, part-time as riders to maintain their livelihood, until September and October, the factory order volume rebounded, the demand for recruitment increased, and they returned to the factory.
Through these certain incomes, many riders have also realized their dream of buying a house. Anhui Linquan rider Peng Zhonghui bought a four-bedroom, two-hall and two-bathroom house in the county town during the Spring Festival last year, with a total price of 890,000 yuan and a down payment of 270,000 yuan; also from Linquan, Anhui, Wang Wenguang also used his savings as a rider to buy a house of nearly 100 square meters in the county.
In the relationship between ensuring the income of riders, platform-based enterprises are playing an indispensable role, and also allowing countless small and medium-sized businesses to operate stably.
No one can say exactly how long the new crown epidemic will last, but the "cold winter" brought by the epidemic requires government departments, large enterprises and small businesses to join hands and work together to get through it.
03. What is the key to the platform economy?
Song Zhiping, president of the China Association of Listed Companies, mentioned in the "Business Strategy":
"In today's highly developed market economy, who is regulating the market and acting as the 'invisible hand'? I think it's big business.
Practice has proved that the integration of the market by large enterprises is a wise choice to solve the problem of excess, which can not only achieve the purpose of reducing the development of the industry and reducing production capacity, but also take into account various resources and the interests of all parties through rational and orderly survival of the fittest, which is the progress of the market-oriented form. That's why I often say that big companies are the terminators of excess capacity. ”
As a role-player who connects thousands of market players, between merchants, riders, and consumers, the platform undoubtedly has to consider more things.
Take the takeaway riders as an example, for them, choosing such a profession as a takeaway delivery man is undoubtedly to pursue a better life, although it is hard, but as long as there is hope for the future and hope for life, it will always adhere to it. This is also why many white-collar workers and people of different occupations have also delivered takeaways part-time.
However, for takeaway riders, in addition to working hard to make money, there are also other needs, such as labor rights are guaranteed, there is room for growth, etc.
Platform companies are also doing more in this regard. For example, Meituan has changed the "estimated delivery time" of ordering takeaways into an "estimated delivery time" that gives riders more buffer time.
For example, for the career development of takeaway riders, in the "2022 Blue Rider Development and Security" report released by Hungry Mo, it is mentioned that in 2021, a total of 1877 Blue Riders have been promoted to station managers and captains. Meituan also launched the "Same Boat Plan" last year, starting from job security and career development, echoing a series of work issues that riders are most concerned about, so that riders can feel more humane management in receiving orders and running orders, and nearly 3,000 riders have been promoted in 11 cities.
For the platform, takeaway riders, merchants and consumers are indispensable, and how to coordinate the interest relationship between the three is the basis of the takeaway platform business model.
Repeated epidemics have also brought many challenges to the survival of offline catering merchants. On February 21, Haidilao issued a performance forecast, compared with the net profit of 310 million yuan in 2020, the net loss in 2021 is expected to be 3.8-4.5 billion yuan. The losses were due to the loss of more than 300 restaurants shut down in 2021 and mismanagement due to rapid expansion due to the pandemic.
According to data, in the past 2021, the number of store closures in the catering industry is conservatively estimated at the level of one million, a new ten-year high. The cost of raw materials, labor costs and rental property costs, the three costs continue to rise to become an important reason for crushing many catering businesses, in contrast, the contribution of takeaway business revenue to the total revenue of catering has increased compared with the past.
Digitalization and onlineization are becoming important keywords in the catering industry in the post-epidemic era, and the value of the platform economy is constantly highlighted here.
The so-called goodness of the market is also reflected in this, so that the entrepreneurial spirit can be maximized, so that the most scarce entrepreneurial resources in a society can play the most effective role, and constantly promote the road of common prosperity.
04. Conclusion
In the Biography of Adam Smith, author Jesse Norman describes Adam Smith this way:
"He does not think that the business world is a world without morality, nor that political economy is a science that has nothing to do with values", "he hopes that his theoretical system has more than one string, so that it can come out of a richer and more valuable melody", "His "Wealth of Nations" is based on his "Moral Sentiments", and his 'invisible hand' depends on the existence of the 'helping hand'. ”
"In The Theory of Moral Sentiments he despises the human instinct to worship the rich and the powerful and despise the poor," "Smith was an egalitarian. When the interests of the rich and the poor clash, his instincts and theories are almost invariably on the side of the poor", "it is moral and economic to be more inclined to the poor than the rich: to give the poor a fairer chance to compete and let them succeed".
2022 for enterprise platforms, small and medium-sized merchants and each of us, there will still be challenges, we will continue to encounter new problems, but we must always look forward positively, pessimists are often correct, but in the end success is often optimists.
At the end of the article, it also ends with a story for everyone to taste:
The protagonist of the story is also a takeaway knight, they are a couple, called Xue Ming, Dong Lili, usually run a single at the same site, last year the two of them bought a house with a loan in their hometown, and in the new year, the two plan to pay for the monthly payment with the stable income of takeaway. In their view, there is hope for the future, and life is constantly getting better.
Resources:
[1]. "This year's entrepreneurs are most concerned about the topic, finally someone has explained it thoroughly!" (Highly recommended)", Masawa Island
[2]. "Is Takeaway Making the World Bad", Half Buddha Immortal
[3]. "One will be a worker, one will deliver takeaways, vocational education has not helped this group of people", Wu Xiaobo Channel
[4]. "The Question of the Takeaway Rider, the State Gave the Answer", Zhenghe Island
[5]. "Large Platforms and Small Merchants Should Work Together", Economic Daily