Journalist from the gig market entering the village | gig workers | market
Recently, in Jiashan County, Zhejiang Province, the Hanwei Village service point in the Yangtze River Delta gig market was unveiled. This service point is located in the village party and mass service center, with an area of only over 10 square meters, but it is fully functional. The staff are also social security coordinators in the village, and can provide job registration, employment registration, job recommendation, training registration, negotiation and docking services for job seekers.
The entry of the gig market into the village is mainly driven by demand. Ma Jiong, Deputy Director of Jiashan County Talent Exchange Service Center, told reporters that in Jiashan, the gig market has always been a "must-have", and currently there are over 100000 flexible employment personnel in the county. For example, Xitang Town in Jiashan is the hometown of buttons in China. Behind the developed button industry, it relies on a large number of flexible workers who mainly work in button assembly, color diamond pasting, and so on. Lixun Manufacturing, a leading local enterprise in Jiashan, has always had a seasonal large-scale labor demand, with a total labor shortage of nearly 25000 people in the third quarter of each year. The Zhonghanwei Village where the service point was established this time is located near the industrial park in Weitang Street, surrounded by a group of manufacturing enterprises with tidal labor demand. For a long time, Zhonghanwei Village has been one of the main gathering areas for migrant workers.
On the other hand, Jiashan hopes to address its needs more respectfully. "The former odd jobs market was also called the street market, and doing odd jobs meant disgrace." Ma Jiong explained that in the early years, because of the lack of information, many people had to raise a sign to find jobs by the road. Sometimes they had to grab jobs at four or five o'clock in the morning, and they would raise a sign with a little skill. Those who were not skilled would squat on the roadside with shovel, brooms and other things, waiting for customers to pick people up. In recent years, in many places in southern Jiangsu and Zhejiang, where labor demand is concentrated and traditional manufacturing is more intensive, the functions of various talent markets have become more complete. Large enterprises and local governments often set up targeted recruitment platforms, charter cars or even charter flights to pick up workers and return to work. However, introducing acquaintances and working in the labor market are still the main ways of doing odd jobs. "Our gig market is integrated online and offline, and many older job seekers don't know how to use mobile phones. We have dedicated personnel to provide related services. If you don't know how to use a mobile phone, we can help you with it, or you can register directly, we can introduce you to a job, and then notify you by phone," said Ma Jiong.
In February this year, the Jiashan Yangtze River Delta gig market was officially launched. Over the past six months of operation, the results have been quite good. At present, two county-level and town level gig markets have been established offline, three village level service points have been established, and online platforms have settled in nearly a thousand enterprises, serving more than 25000 registered users, posting more than 5000 positions, and completing more than 5200 transactions. From a mechanistic perspective, there are also many innovations in the gig market. For example, innovative commercial insurance cooperation mechanisms and salary payment models have been introduced to provide job seekers with online labor contract signing, accident insurance personal protection, and immediate payment of labor remuneration, solving specific pain points in previous gig job hunting.
In Ma Jiong's view, the most important role of the gig market is to increase income. He gave reporters an example that the current main users of the gig market are probably two types, in addition to tidal workers in factories, there is also a type of job seekers seeking part-time jobs. For example, during the busy farming season every year, part-time drone pilots are a popular position; Some people work in factories during the day and work part-time at the express sorting center at night; Some people run shops during the day and work as waiters after closing at night. "A while ago, a restaurant hoped to recruit security guards with fire monitoring certificates, with a monthly salary of 1000 yuan higher than the average security guard. After posting information on the platform, it quickly received a response, and the number of applicants was much higher than the company had anticipated." Ma Jiong said. The reporter saw in the platform data center that the average profit per trader exceeded 3000 yuan.
However, there are also many difficulties. Due to limitations in industrial structure and labor demand, even in the local area of Jiashan, it is difficult to implement and promote the platform. The reporter found that the distribution of tasks and transaction amounts among different towns and streets in Jiashan is not balanced, and there are significant differences in relevant data between regions. The reporter was curious whether the gig market platform could draw a rough portrait of job seekers, and received a negative answer. Xu Chao, a staff member of Jiashan County Talent Exchange Center, reluctantly told the reporter that in the early promotion process, in order to increase the number of registrants, the platform lifted some restrictions and only needed to enter the name, ID card number and mobile phone number to complete the registration. However, data such as skills and academic experience are missing. At present, job recommendations can only be made based on previous employment experience on the platform, which is difficult to achieve accurate matching.
In the long run, relying on the gig market, Jiashan has even greater ambitions. For example, using the name "Yangtze River Delta", Jiashan hopes to collaborate with Shanghai Qingpu and Jiangsu Wujiang to jointly develop the "Yangtze River Delta gig electronic map". During the interview, Ma Jiong repeatedly emphasized to reporters the need to reverse the stereotype of low-end gig employment. In this regard, Jiashan is exploring high-end "technical gig services" with the aim of attracting "weekend engineers" and "holiday experts" to alleviate the shortage of "high-precision and cutting-edge" talents in key industries in the county, as well as the bottleneck of technological innovation and other development challenges. In addition, Jiashan also provides value-added services for the gig market, such as offering internship positions for college students returning home during the summer vacation; Open up a skill enhancement training section and offer vocational skills training, etc.
