From contract employment to flexible employment, how difficult is it for this class of graduates?
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The annual graduation season is also the annual employment season. However, unlike previous years, this year's employment is a bit more difficult. When the 2022 graduates leave the campus, they will face an almost unprecedented test: the tightening of the job market under the repeated epidemics, the continuous layoffs in the Internet and other industries, and the largest competition in history, from 10.76 million same-class students .
In this context, "flexible employment" has received widespread attention. In simple terms, flexible employment is the so-called "gig work". Whether it is active or passive, an objective fact is that more and more people choose this kind of employment, that is, to take part-time, temporary, staged and flexible working hours and other flexible forms of employment. From traditional contracted employment to today's flexible employment, is it a compromise under difficult times, or is it a trend pointed to by social changes?
From contract employment to flexible employment
It is undeniable that the employment pressure of college graduates this year is indeed very severe.
In 2022, there will be 10.76 million college graduates in China, an increase of 1.67 million over last year. It is the first time in history that the number of graduates has exceeded 10 million. The rapid growth rate is obvious. In contrast, the number of graduates only increased by 1.74 million in the nearly ten years from 2011 to 2019. In fact, after the number of 10.76 million graduates was announced, this year has become a veritable "hardest employment season in history".
It is worth mentioning that with the expansion of enrollment in Chinese colleges and universities, the number of graduates has hit new highs year after year in the past few years. Graduation at the turn of each spring and summer can be said to be the "hardest employment season in history" of that year. Of course, although the number of graduates has increased year by year, in the past, the rapid economic development can also effectively absorb these new labor force.
And now, affected by the outbreak of the epidemic from time to time, various places have fallen into a state of lockdown from time to time. Under this situation, the employment of college graduates this year is in trouble . Zhang Jun, chief economist at Morgan Stanley Securities, said that if a simple correlation is calculated between the GDP growth rate in the past few years and new urban jobs, roughly one percentage point of GDP growth corresponds to 2 million to 2.4 million new urban jobs. This year, China's Two Sessions set a target of 11 million new urban jobs, which is in line with 10.76 million college graduates.
Zhang Jun said that to achieve this target GDP growth rate should probably fall within the range of 4.5%-5.5%. However, China's GDP growth rate of 4.8% in the first quarter of this year has almost fallen out of the above-mentioned range. Moreover, the impact of the epidemic on the second quarter will be further highlighted. Under such an economic situation, the unemployment rate has already risen. According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics of China on May 16, the national urban survey unemployment rate rose by 0.3 percentage points to 6.1% in April, hitting a new high since March 2020.
Among them, the unemployment rate of the 16-24-year-old population survey was as high as 18.2%, the highest since historical data. In April, 1.21 million new jobs were created in cities and towns, not only lower than the 1.4 million in the same period last year, but also lower than the 1.25 million in April during the 2020 epidemic. These figures reflect the grim situation in the current labor market, and more importantly, this year's 10.76 million graduates have yet to officially graduate.
The Paper quoted authoritative sources as saying that as of April 17, 2022, the implementation rate of college graduates nationwide was only 23.61%. According to the "2022 College Student Employability Survey Report" released by Zhaopin Recruitment, as of mid-April, 46.7% of fresh graduates with job-hunting plans have received employment letters, far lower than 62.8% in the same period in 2021; 15.4% of the total number of students, also down from 18.3% in the same period in 2021. In Shanghai, where the employment season was hit by the epidemic, the implementation rate of 227,000 college graduates was 36.47%, which was 6.54 percentage points lower than the same period in May last year.
In this context, expanding flexible employment channels and developing new forms of employment have become important measures to promote the employment of college graduates . On the one hand, in 2020, the Ministry of Education will further expand the scope of flexible employment, including e-commerce entrepreneurship (such as opening an online store) as self-employment, and adding Internet marketing workers, public account bloggers, and e-sports workers to freelance jobs. Three categories. On the other hand, in order to increase the employment rate, some colleges and universities will use various methods to "do both hard and soft", allowing students who have not implemented jobs to sign flexible employment forms, while tacitly condoning fraudulent behaviors.
It can be said that whether it is active or passive, an objective fact is that more and more college students choose such flexible employment methods.
Social trends in flexible employment
Of course, under the influence of the epidemic, to a certain extent, the choice of flexible employment for college students is a compromise under difficult times, but it is undeniable that flexible employment is also a trend pointed to by social changes.
It is worth mentioning that, since the Industrial Revolution, the most striking feature of employment in developed and developing countries is that not only in the total amount, but also in the structure. The total difference refers to the high employment rate in developed countries and the low employment rate in developing countries; structurally, the self-employment rate in developed countries is low, while the self-employment rate in developing countries is high.
Douglas Collin, professor of development economics at Oxford University, points out in the paper Self-employment Rates: More May Not Be Better, that the self-employment rate in the 20 most developed industrial countries is 14%, compared with 14% in the poorest 20 countries. The self-employment rate is 43%. Statistically, poverty reduction in a country is accompanied by increases in productivity and wages, as well as a decline in self-employment rates.
In developed countries, there is usually such a law that the higher the per capita GDP, the lower the self-employment rate. According to OECD data, in 2020 the United States has the lowest figure among OECD countries with 6.3%, while Colombia tops the list with 51.3%.
In recent years, however, many industrialized countries have seen rising rates of self-employment. According to the Millennium Macro data of the Bank of England, in 2016, the self-employment rate in the United Kingdom reached a high point of nearly 150 years, at 15%. Although it has declined in the past two years, the self-employment rate in 2018 was still 14.81%, more than 13.15% in 1861, twice the lowest point of 6.98% in 1945.
The phenomenon isn't just in the UK, but self-employment has also been rising recently in almost half of OECD countries. In other words, forms of flexible employment are spreading .
The reason is that digital technology has reshaped the traditional gig economy model. On the one hand, compared with gig labor in the traditional sense, gig labor in the digital economy era has a strong Internet color, and the rapid development of Internet and big data technologies. Make workers no longer get jobs through labor intermediaries, but get orders directly through the platform. Workers have the autonomy to work, which means a self-employment production relationship. At the same time, the social contract nature of labor-management relations has undergone a substantial change, from a fixed, explicit social contract relationship to a flexible, implicit market-oriented contract relationship.
On the other hand, the development of new technologies such as the Internet, big data, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence has brought about tremendous changes in the current production methods of gig workers . First, the mode of production that used to be based on productive labor has increasingly turned to be based on service labor. Secondly, unlike the previous gig workers who worked in fixed and centralized workplaces, today's gig workers adopt decentralized work methods, and the workplace has greater flexibility and autonomy. Third, the connection between gig workers and customers is no longer through the previous labor intermediaries, but is based on the Internet platform. The platform uses cloud computing to accurately match labor supply and demand pools on a large scale and with high efficiency.
For China, the flexible employment brought about by the digital economy is of particular significance. With the help of digital online platforms, more people can increase their income through this . According to the latest statistics, China has nearly 200 million people with flexible employment, many of whom rely on digital platforms. Compared with developed countries, the population of China relying on digital platforms for employment is much higher than that of developed countries. Online car-hailing drivers and takeaway riders have become the "reservoir" of employment in China.
At the same time, many entrepreneurs have realized business through the platform, and a self-employed person has turned to recruit more workers, achieving leapfrog growth. The rise of live-streaming shopping is a case in point.
Obviously, with the continuous deepening and acceleration of digital transformation, coupled with the impact of the normalization of the epidemic, people have to rethink how to work, the value and meaning of work, and corporate managers are also trying new work models, cultures and values. The labor market will naturally shift to a more flexible and flexible direction.
Flexible employment is not perfect
Of course, these new jobs also bring many challenges, and flexible employment is not as perfect as imagined.
First of all, for college students who have difficulty finding employment, flexible employment is often a passive choice. The "2022 First Quarter Employment Prosperity Report for College Graduates" jointly released by the China Employment Research Institute of Renmin University of China and Zhaopin Recruitment pointed out that the employment market prosperity index of college graduates in the first quarter (the number of market recruitment demand / the number of market job applicants, CIER) decreased. To the lowest point since the outbreak, it was only 0.71. Recruitment demand fell 8% year-on-year, while job applicants rose 75%. Among them, aviation/aerospace research and manufacturing, gifts/arts/luxury goods, tourism/vacation, rental services and other industries are the most depressed. In the face of the severe employment situation, flexible employment has almost become an "anaesthetic" for schools and graduates.
According to the current employment categories and employment statistics classification of college graduates, flexible employment can be divided into freelance and other employment forms. It is not difficult to obtain a fake identity as a "freelancer", as long as the graduate submits a certified document signed by himself. "Other employment forms of employment" generally require the stamp of the employer - it can be an affiliated company arranged by the school, or Taobao can even purchase related services, with prices ranging from 30 yuan to 100 yuan.
Secondly, flexible employment often leads to the question of how to protect the rights and interests of workers ? As a mainstream form of employment, stable employment is also called typical employment or formal employment. The corresponding flexible employment, also called informal employment, has existed as a supplement to stable employment for a long time. Standards, labor conditions, and rights and interests protection are all at a disadvantage .
The first problem in the protection of flexible employment rights and interests is the unclear legal relationship. The judgment framework of China's existing labor legal system is to judge the legal relationship between the laborer and the employer based on the two classifications of labor relationship and labor relationship. However, the answers given by the courts in different cases concerning the gig economy are inconsistent. , which led to the ambiguity of the identification of labor legal relations. The difficulty in identifying legal status will mean that workers cannot get the social security they deserve.
In addition, in terms of participating in social security, since there is no labor contract signed with the enterprise, the non-local hukou cannot pay social security locally, and can only use the method of paying social security. Moreover, although the Social Insurance Law has clear provisions on basic pension and medical insurance for flexible employees, there are no clear provisions on work-related injury, unemployment, and maternity insurance. In addition, most flexible employees change their positions frequently, which makes it difficult to meet the requirements of continuous full-term social security contributions to the payment period, and face difficulties in account transfer and connection.
Traditional social security is built on the basis of labor contracts, and only when there is a labor relationship can there be compulsory social security. However, many of the employees relying on now do not exist in the form of labor contracts, which brings many problems. How to match flexible digital employment with rigid social security is something that must be considered at this stage, especially when there are nearly 200 million people in flexible employment . Undoubtedly, a more inclusive social security system will bring better protection to workers in the gig economy.
Currently, a fundamental change is taking place in the global labor market. It can be said that today's flexible employment situation is a gig economy that is more deeply embedded in an individualized society. It is a gig economy supported and dominated by digital platforms. It is an ancient form of work that is rejuvenated. Ethics and Moral Social Movements. Finding the optimal solution for flexible employment is a must to realize the long-term development of flexible employment.