Ending the Job Jostle

The location was Majuqiao Day Labor Market in a town on the outskirts of Beijing, which for years has been a hub to recruit day laborers and other causal workers. It was repurposed from a parking lot in July 2024 to make it more official. Flyers are posted on boards every day, and there are two shelters for job hunters to rest. Every two months, a job fair for manual work is held there. 　

Day laborers in Beijing used to gather at a nearby crossroads to wait for jobs, Ma said, but now online channels have expanded employment opportunities nationwide. Beijing has established at least 12 casual job markets and 16 job centers that provide information about temporary work. Each district of the capital and local governments elsewhere have released mini apps to advertise jobs. 　

According to the 2024 report on the gig economy released in January by Hangzhou Gongmall Technology, a digital services company, the number of flexible employees in China doing part-time or temporary jobs exceeded 265 million in 2024, and 175 million of those found jobs on employment platforms. Local authorities are now working to make gig employment safer, easier to find and ensure standardized conditions. 

He lives in a cramped dormitory with two other day laborers near Majuqiao Day Labor Market and gets up around 4:30 am every day, arriving at the crossroads at 5 am. If he does not find work by 7 am, he goes home to rest, then repeats his routine from 4-7 pm. 　

Most causal laborers in Beijing lead a similar life. Migrant laborers have “wait-ed for work at the crossroads,” a phrase describing how casual workers find jobs, for at least two decades,Ma said. 

Casual laborer Li Peng (pseudonym), 40, has more skills than Ma. He told NewsChina that he usually works as a welder, repairer, plumber or in construction.Each job lasts from several days to two months. “At Majuqiao, there are more calls for sorting packages at delivery companies than any other work, but I don’t like it. You work long hours and the wages are lower. I prefer working at a construction site, though there are far fewer jobs on offer,” he said.　

Unlike Ma who seldom uses online channels, Li often uses WeChat or other apps. There are multiple online channels advertising jobs, and more employment agencies are establishing WeChat groups to match job seekers and employers. 　

But Li and other workers complained that online channels like WeChat groups are not very efficient. Employers post so many ads every day, making it hard to sift through and find the information job seekers need. Now, there are groups that just post jobs on chats for certain sectors, which makes it easier. 　

It is a challenge to set up a full-service and comprehensive casual job plat-form,according to the Employment and Startup Service Center of Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province. 　

“A big challenge is most employers’ temporary labor demands are random and casual, in addition to the limited information channels for job hunters, so it is very difficult to establish a stable system for casual employment,” the center told NewsChina in a written reply. 

Beijing’s Pinggu District has been a pioneer in establishing a full-service online platform for casual employment. 　

“Pinggu District is supported by agriculture.In the busy season, there is high demand for temporary workers, but in the slack season, many farmers have time to do casual work,”Duan Zhenwen, director of the public service center of the Pinggu District Human Resources Bureau, told NewsChina. He said that a number of leading delivery companies have established hubs in Pinggu, and there are also clusters of food processing companies, car plants and services businesses. 　

“The traditional ‘crossroads’ markets have been there for years, but they caused traffic jams and risks to safety,” he said. 　

In July 2022, the district government invited two human resource agencies to cooperate with them to establish the online job platform. District authorities tried hard to promote the platform and boost cooperation between employment agencies and employers. 　

“District authorities, local village and town governments as well as labor agencies all need to work together,” Duan said. “At the beginning, we sent our personnel to publicize the platform among job hunters, and local government staff would take a loudspeaker to promote the platform street by street,” he added. 　

Duan has found that the platform has solved or standardized a number of problems, especially the classification of job posts. There are 18 main types of job, with 431 sub-categories. The district government has laid out what these job types are and provides a suggested wage for each job. 　

“We are now concentrating our efforts on launching a full service to better protect the rights and interests of both employers and employees,” Duan said. “Employers need employees to come to work and finish the task on time and the employees need the employers to pay them on time and pay for their insurance, if necessary. We also need to be able to solve labor disputes,” Duan said. 　

The service focuses on checking attendance,wage settlement and insurance. Duan said the platform allows workers to check in to prove they started a job, generating a card that shows what job they are doing, working hours and locations.Employees can check in by clicking a button, scanning a QR code or by facial recognition. 　

The platform connects to financial portals,enabling daily wages to be directly transferred from employers to employees accounts. It also includes cooperation with insurance companies to help employers pay the necessary insurance for employees and guarantee coverage and claims. 

　

By March, Pinggu District had launched two platforms which have cumulatively posted 139,000 casual positions and helped some 110,000 people find work. In addition, in December 2023, Pinggu government established a new in-person casual job center, equipped with training rooms and a labor dispute mediation room.　

Although it will take time for casual employment services to go fully digital, Duan said that most communication be-tween employers, employees and agencies can be conducted online already. 

He told NewsChina that digital channels now mean much more flexibility for workers and householders. For example, in the past, you had to contact a repair company if you wanted a plumber, but now independent plumbers can find jobs on platforms. This extends to working with some of China’s tech giants, who besides offering goods for delivery, now offer many types of door-to-door services. 　

Other types of roles that were not offered at day labor markets, including white-collar jobs in offices such as designing,programming, network operation and marketing, can now be found on job platforms, offering higher wages. 　

“It means that ‘casual job’ has become a more neutral term, not just associated with jobs that are unstable, low income and with poor working conditions. Now it is associated with high flexibility, free time and more opportunities,” Zhang said. 

　

Human resources agencies have been forced to adapt to the expansion in online job seeking.The most obvious influence is a huge increase in efficiency. “Our company used to record clients’ information by hand and we had to spend a lot of time organizing interviews.We were often too busy to have lunch,” Kang Chenhong, head of Lügu Day Labor Market in Pinggu District, told NewsChina, “Even when we started using online channels like We-Chat,we also had to spend at least one night calling the candidates to check their information, but now they can fill in their own details and we can check it and connect to them on the same platform, so it’s much faster,” he added. 　

But online platforms have raised the entry threshold for employment agencies.“It’s harder now to get a piece of the action,” one agent who refused to reveal his name told NewsChina.He said that because he lacks proper licensing for the recruitment business, he is unable to post job listings on government platforms. As traditional employment agencies are more costly and time-consuming than those assisted by online platforms, his profits are shrinking as well. 　

“Online platforms have broken the monopoly of some big local agencies,” Professor Zhang said. “In the future, traditional agencies may play a role only in sectors that have large demand for temporary workers or that require cheaper employees, such as manufacturing or some service industries. Traditional agents will lose business,” he added, stressing that online platforms are key to preventing fake information and labor discrimination, as well as blocking unlicensed and unqualified agencies. 　

Big tech companies have taken notice of the business and some are already offering services. On March 27, Tencent released a mini app called Nearby Jobs, which has already pulled in cooperation from a number of local governments. Jiujiang, a city in Jiangxi Province, has uploaded all their employment information from 890 job centers to Nearby Jobs. According to the local government, the information is free of charge and they only have to employ people to check the information. 　

“We cooperate with Tencent because they have the advantage of online services related to traffic, maps and global positioning, which will be helpful to the city’s inflow of professionals,”Jiujiang Employment and Startup Service Center told NewsChina in a written reply. Creating mini apps to use within the WeChat system is straightforward. “It’s easy to access Tencent and more precise information matching will help users find an appropriate job faster,” they said. 　

Deng Di, a team leader for Nearby Jobs, told NewsChina that they currently only cooperate with government authorities for safety reasons. “Whether or not [private] employment agencies can use the mini app to post employment information depends on how they cooperate with local employment authorities and how well they check the information,” he said. 　

By March 2025, Nearby Jobs had helped 24,000 people nationwide into employment, but it is just a start. “We hope our business will expand to regions with large employment demands, such as the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, Chengdu [Sichuan Province] and Chongqing. We are exploring cooperation with big enterprises and are expanding more application scenarios to cover more jobs, like home care for seniors. We also want to include a mediation service on our site to help in case of disputes [be-tween employees and employers],” Deng said. 

Ma Shengjun said he seldom goes online to look for work, since he finds it hard to use. He said it is difficult to re-member the names of apps, and he needs help to use their functions. 　

“Sometimes an app shifts to other pages. It’s really confusing,” he complained. 　

Deng told NewsChina that users of Nearby Jobs are mostly between 30 and 39 and that older job hunters still rely more on the traditional methods they have always used. 

　

“Online posts for jobs that require higher skill levels or for hard manual work may suit younger people more, but older people are often restricted by their age and lower skill levels,” Professor Zhang said. 　

“Besides, using online channels may bring about some hidden costs, such as phone charges,” he added. 　

Workers told NewsChina that many apps not only charge membership fees but fail to conduct thorough enough checks for fake information, or do enough to weed out bad or unlicensed employers. If a job hunter has a bad experience using an app or even suffers losses, trust in all online channels could be lost. 　

“A very efficient casual job app or platform not only requires enormous amounts of employment information and precise sorting and categories, but also needs to make it easier for people to use its digital functions, increase promotion and improve people’s trust in online channels. There’s a long way to go,” Zhang said. 　

Duan agrees, saying that many people still resort to crossroads day labor markets, although they are gradually losing favor. 　

“Many rural workers still choose a crossroads market to find a temporary job due to the lower cost,” he said. 　

“If a proportion of [low wage] laborers are blocked out of the employment system due to digital development, we should bring another system, namely the social assistance system, into play,” Zhang said.