With the advancement of a new round of technological revolution and the iterative upgrading of new economic formats and new industrial models, a large number of new occupations and new jobs have been created with the continuous development of Internet technology and digital industry. According to the "General Report of the Ninth National Workforce Survey" released by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions in 2023, the total number of employees in the country is about 402 million, of which 84 million are new forms of employment.
Among the new career opportunities spawned by many new industries, e-sports players/e-sports operators, network anchors represented by Internet marketers, and artificial intelligence technology talents can be described as the current high-demand new professions. In addition, new professions such as homestay housekeepers, takeaway operators, bartenders, digital twin application technicians, and escorts have also allowed more young people to see a variety of choices outside the traditional track.
Start by doing a "part-time job".
Chen Chen, a 24-year-old pet nurse with two years of experience, began her career exploration when she was still in college. Chen Chen, who loves small animals very much, has always wanted to use her spare time to do some part-time work, and door-to-door pet sitting service has become the first job she considers. She posted her "job search" post on a social platform, and it was not easy to take orders at first, but after hitting a wall everywhere, she finally welcomed her first customer.
The actual pampering service is far from being as simple as she imagined. "Every little animal has a different personality, and you need to check a lot of details with the owner before coming to the door, and sometimes a bunch of unexpected situations occur. For the owners, these small animals are not only pets, but also their 'family'. Chen Chen said.
△ Small animals in a pet store
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After graduating from university, Chen Chen stayed in Nanjing to work, and after work, she began to really engage in the pet industry. Although Chen Chen accumulated a certain number of old customers during college, she still chose to use the Internet to settle in a platform specializing in pet services. During the Spring Festival this year, Chen Chen received nearly 100 orders from more than 20 employers, earning nearly 10,000 yuan. "In my spare time, I'm constantly learning about pets and new equipment. Recently, the types of pets have begun to gradually increase, and rabbits and parrots ......," Chen Chen told China Report.
Mr. Wang, from Changsha, whose daily work is mainly curatorial design, chose to become a Didi driver on weekends. He registered an account on the Didi platform and started taking orders, and this year is his third year as a "Didi driver". The freedom of time is one of the reasons why Mr. Wang chose this industry. "Later, I also began to pay attention to the neatness and cleanliness of the car and the service attitude towards passengers." Mr. Wang said.
According to statistics, there are currently 200 million flexible employees in mainland China. In 2023, the Internet flexible employment and gig service platform, as a representative of the platform economy, will become an innovation carrier in the modern service industry and a new business format in the era of digital economy.
Zhang Haidong, a professor at the School of Sociology at Shanghai University and executive director of the Shanghai New Social Class Research Center, told China Report: "At present, Chinese society is showing the coexistence and interweaving of three production systems: agricultural society, industrial society and information society, but the information society production system with information technology and scientific and technological innovation as the driving force is beginning to emerge. The division of labor has been further refined and complexified, and two types of groups have emerged, 'high-skilled' and 'de-skilled', which are formed based on the different levels of innovative knowledge and mastery of high-precision skills. One is the many creative technology personnel and creative industry practitioners who have appeared in emerging fields and specialized positions such as digital marketing, data analysis, and cloud computing services, and the other is couriers, food delivery workers, and online car-hailing drivers who work in the gig economy embedded in the platform model. ”
According to the 2023 White Paper on New Career Development Trends, 17.5% of young people are trying new careers outside of traditional industries, and 58.5% have a strong interest in new careers. In the field of labor, young people are reluctant to work in factories and prefer to accept flexible and free flexible work, and at the same time, there are characteristics of de-industrialization, de-employerization, and part-time employment of jobs such as "online store owners" and "vloggers".
△ Data from the 2023 New Career Development Trends White Paper
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Zhang Haidong said that many workers in the new occupational structure often obtain work tasks based on the platform economy or more flexible organizational methods, and remote work, flexible working hours, and project systems have constructed their new labor model of flexibility, flexibility, and "borderlessness". Labor or work locations are not limited to one platform or position, and the boundaries between full-time and part-time are beginning to blur. Workers and the platform do not establish an employment relationship but a new type of service relationship and cooperative relationship, and the "de-employer" labor model reduces their dependence on the workplace, and the original hierarchical management model is likely to be no longer suitable for the new occupational structure.
Redefining a career
With the development of aging, the escort industry, which plays the role of "temporary family", has become increasingly popular in recent years. Without any professional background, "zero foundation" can easily enter the industry? The truth in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province does not think so. In the past 4 years as a full-time escort, her business scope has covered Wuxi and Shanghai. Four years ago, Zhenzhen, who was engaged in the TCM health care industry, was the owner of many stores, and she learned about the new profession of "escort doctor" in an unintentional conversation with customers.
"To become a qualified escort, you need to know as much as possible about the basic situation and process structure of major hospitals, and at the same time have enough patience and responsibility. Do everything as if it were your own family's business, so that you can gain respect and trust, and others will think you are reliable. Zhenzhen told reporters that most of the people who came to her for escort services were elderly, and some of them were young people who needed to be accompanied. Taking Wuxi as an example, the fee for accompanying the clinic basically starts at half a day, and the hospital service is 4 hours, generally 200 yuan. Speaking of a week, it is mainly concentrated in the working week, and the monthly income is conservatively estimated to be about 7,000 yuan.
△ An escort is accompanying the patient to the hospital
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When it comes to the profession of "escort" itself, there are really many unspeakable secrets. There are two sides to every industry, and some people do not recognize this profession and feel that escorting is just an "errand business". However, some people do have difficulties in seeking medical treatment and are willing to accept the price of accompanying doctors. In another sense, for doctors, the accompaniment is actually a bridge between doctors and patients. "In my opinion, the existence of the escort is mainly to play an emotional comfort and the answer to related professional questions, which can avoid some doctor-patient conflicts to a certain extent." Really said.
But when the escort industry is mixed, misunderstandings don't just happen in the service itself. Zhenzhen talked to reporters about how she was mistaken for a "scalper" by other patients during an accompanying visit, which made Zhenzhen feel very frustrated after a hard day's work. "Once you are dressed as a 'scalper', it is difficult to carry out the work anymore, and the hospital staff will also be resistant when they see the escort. I really treat this job as my own career, and in the process, I have gained a lot of recognition from friends and service users, which has brought me a great sense of accomplishment. ”
At the beginning of 2024, the tourism economy will pick up, and the new model and new format of "Internet + tourism" will gradually rise, releasing more job demand. Zhang Shuangquan is currently engaged in tourism planning in Jinhua, Zhejiang. He said that he loves to travel very much, and has been a backpacker since he was 14 years old, and has more than 30 years of travel experience. Previously, he worked in retail in a bookstore, and because he felt that the traditional industry was too restrictive, he wanted to be more free. A career as a travel planner has helped him explore possibilities, meet different people and make many friends.
△ In recent years, the domestic tourism market has been hot. Two tourists visited the "Dream of Red Mansions, Drama Fantasy City" drama theme park in Langfang.
Compared with the tourism planner in the traditional tourism industry, the tourism planner needs to do route planning, integrate tourism resources, and explore characteristic tourist spots. In Zhang Shuangquan's view, a travel planner is not simply a "strategy", sometimes he needs to dig out the hollow design and step on the point in advance in order to find an in-depth travel route. Of course, being a travel planner also requires a love of travel, a love of service, and a deep dive into content. "In general, the nature of a travel planner's job is to travel around, but the process of planning is really a work of knowledge exchange. I believe that travel planners are a new-age profession that measures the world with their feet. Zhang Shuangquan said.
"A lot of times there are a lot of options for work, but some people don't notice the possibilities." Regarding the career choice of young people, Zhang Shuangquan said that he hoped that young people would "go out bravely and then land in a down-to-earth manner." ”
The future of emerging professions
"At present, the social and occupational structure is changing from the traditional 'manufacturing logic' to the 'information logic', so the proportion of workers, managers and technicians formed based on the traditional industrial production system will decrease correspondingly, while the proportion of relatively independent and autonomous jobs with knowledge creation, information processing and creative design as the core has increased." Zhang Haidong told the "China Report" reporter.
By traditional standards, new occupations are hardly called "good jobs" and are not yet matched by existing security systems, making them highly vulnerable. Zhang Haidong believes that this vulnerability problem is still the current evaluation criteria for work under the dual dual labor market segmentation framework that is detached from the production system of traditional industrial society. However, under the production system of the information society, as the importance of new occupations continues to emerge, the role of new occupations in social and economic development, as well as the improvement of workers' income, prestige and career growth, will become more and more prominent, and people's evaluation criteria for work will also change.
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The scene of a job fair.
The escort doctor Zhenzhen told reporters that in the face of the chaos in the industry similar to emerging occupations, he hopes to introduce clearer rules and regulations to standardize, strengthen supervision and crackdown, and also hope to carry out a certain amount of science popularization of the emerging professions at present, so that everyone can understand and break the stereotypes in everyone's hearts, so as to better promote the development of new professions.
This year's government work report has mentioned that "classify and improve the guarantee measures for flexible employment services, and expand the pilot project of occupational injury protection for employees in new forms of employment". Not long ago, at the legislative discussion meeting of the National People's Congress in Shanghai, a takeaway brother bluntly said that he was unwilling to pay social security, which caused social concern. For many workers in the new industry, the nature of their work is flexible and the income is not stable, and similar problems often occur when paying social security according to a fixed standard.
"The new career model is innovative, flexible, and inclusive, so the existing policy system can be adjusted and innovated in the fields of law, taxation, social security, education, etc., to meet the development needs of the new career model. I believe that the policy system can be considered from innovative thinking, legal thinking, security thinking and educational thinking to meet the development needs of the information society, production system and new career model. Zhang Haidong said.
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The takeaway guy is riding and making deliveries.
Zhang Haidong believes that to solve these problems, one is to support the research and development and application of new technologies through government procurement, capital subsidies, social donations and other measures, and at the same time provide tax exemptions and financial support for small and micro enterprises in the field of science and technology, small enterprises and start-ups in the development of the digital economy; The second is to update and adjust labor laws and regulations according to the characteristics of labor employment and employment under the new occupational model, redefine labor relations, and clarify the legal status and rights and interests of freelancers, platform economy practitioners and flexible employees; Third, it is necessary to establish a social security system that adapts to the new occupational model and a policy system that maintains the fairness of the bottom line, and establish a more flexible, convenient and inclusive social security system to ensure that workers in non-traditional forms of employment can obtain basic social security. Finally, in response to the continuous demand for high skills, innovation and creativity in the information society, the society should establish a system to support workers' lifelong learning and vocational education and training.
"In the future, the new career model and the production system of the information society will continue to develop in the direction of more digitalization, intelligence, flexibility and personalization. We need to give full play to the social production advantages of the new vocational model, focus on innovation and creativity, and support entrepreneurship and enterprise development. At the same time, we should strengthen cross-field and interdisciplinary collaboration, promote the exchange of knowledge and the complementarity of skills, promote the application of new technologies and the exploration of new industrial growth points, and improve the innovation and efficiency of social production. Zhang Haidong said.
Written by: Liu Xueyun, reporter of China Report
Image source: Xinhua News Agency, Visual China
Editor-in-charge: Zhang Lijuan
Editor: Zhao Jun, Xu Hao