The vigorous growth of the platform and sharing economies has generated many various job opportunities. In Shenzhen, about 1.6 million employees are engaged in new forms of employment, becoming a driving force in the city’s economic and social development, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported.
New forms of employment include jobs that have appeared due to the development of internet platforms and upgrades in consumption.
By the end of last year, there were about 84 million people engaged in new forms of employment in China, including 9.6 million in Guangdong Province. In Shenzhen, the figure accounted for 12.9% of the city’s employees, statistics showed.
According to surveys conducted by the municipal human resources and social security bureau, most of the city’s new employment form employees are in industries such as e-commerce, internet housekeeping platforms, ride-hailing platforms, parcel and takeout deliveries, and online livestreaming.
Among them, over 450,000 drivers are working for ride-hailing platforms and over 170,000 are parcel and takeout deliverymen. More than 70% of the employees don’t have a Shenzhen hukou, or household registration, and work beyond eight hours a day.
However, there are also some pain points for these employees, such as unclear labor relations, incomplete insurance system and age-related anxiety within the group.
The city’s relevant departments have made joint efforts to address these problems. At the end of last year, the household registration threshold for flexibly employed people was completely lifted.
As of this September, over 540,000 people in the city had been covered by the basic endowment insurance for enterprise employees as flexibly employed people, and over 200,000 people from eight employee categories including those engaged in new forms of employment have paid individual work injury insurance.
Shenzhen has also taken the country’s lead in establishing a professional skill certification grading system in the delivery industry and developing a sound training, use, evaluation and incentive mechanism for frontline skilled talents in the delivery industry.
The city also plans to build several service centers for people engaged in new forms of employment through online and offline channels.