Logistics and digital technology have become the main activities of the internet giant
With the growth of technology companies in China, their demand for skilled workers also increases. JD.com, one of the leading online sales companies, announced this week its plans to hire 15,000 new workers this year, of which most, about 10,000, will be for its logistics arm. The rest of the positions are for retail sales and other affiliates.
Retail sales, logistics and digital technology have become the internet giant’s core activities . At the end of the third quarter of 2018, JD.com had a staff of 170,000 and a large supply chain network, generating tens of millions of outsourced jobs and third-party online stores.
For its part, the e-commerce company Alibaba, which has the largest online shopping platform in the country, advanced last week that it does not plan to have layoffs this year, but that it will continue to increase its workforce, improving the programs of training and using more platform resources to generate more jobs.
"This year there will be no layoffs, but we will use the Alibaba platform a lot to stimulate consumption and generate more orders for the manufacturing and services sectors," Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang said at an internal meeting last year. Thursday.
These decisions are an encouraging sign for the country’s labor market and have helped to dispel doubts about the decline in opportunities in the internet sector that had spread through social networks.
At a time when a prolonged economic slowdown called into question the employment situation in China, companies in active and promising emerging sectors, especially services and high-tech, have created jobs.
Analysts believe that the tertiary sector, which accounted for more than half of China’s gross domestic product (GDP) last year, has served as an anchor for the labor market to remain stable, as services, which are generally labor intensive labor force, they are more efficient creating new job opportunities than the traditional secondary sector.
With the emergence of new business models and sectors, demand for labor grew at an unprecedented rate in sectors such as e-commerce, online entertainment, finance, smart manufacturing, and transportation and food services to address through websites.
The founder of digital media company Beijing Moviebook Technology, Ji Xiaochen, worked until midnight on the Spring Festival holiday in early February to review his business plans. "For our company, it is fortunate to coincide with the period of expansion of artificial intelligence and we aim to double our workforce this year," Ji said in a statement to the People’s Daily.
Alibaba also noted that the platform is generating new positions, such as trainers for AI customer service staff, engineers for its cloud computing activities, and buying guides for its new retail businesses.
The overall ratio between the number of job openings and job candidates in China stood at 1 in 27 in the fourth quarter of last year, indicating strong demand, according to data from the Ministry of Human Resources and Security. Social.
This information also shows that the private sector played a key role in increasing employment with faster workforce growth, with more migrant workers opting for the central and western regions.
China’s policy makers attach great importance to employment, which, together with consumer prices, directly affects daily life and determines the health and prospects of the economy.
A number of measures have been implemented to encourage the labor market to remain stable, such as refunds of employee insurance payments, government aid for training and further tax cuts. Favorable policies have also been put in place for those who create their own businesses.
"From central authorities to local governments, pro-employment measures have brought together concentrated efforts and ensured stable employment," said Mo Rong, vice president of the China Academy of Labor and Social Security.
Last year around 13.61 million new jobs were created in urban areas, 123.7 percent of the annual goal, a record. The number has been six consecutive years above 13 million.
The main indicators were unchanged. The registered unemployment rate was 3.8 percent at the end of last year, the lowest in more than a decade, and the unemployment rate calculated through the survey was around 5 percent, below the established target of the 5.5 percent.
Given the stable behavior of employment and the rapid advance of the new growth engines, China is confident and believes that it has the capacity to manage any type of risk or challenge and achieve the creation of more jobs of better quality, said a spokesman for the National Commission. Development and Reform, Meng Wei.