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recently, everyone has been helping the riders calculate their income.i'm not happy.。

the cause was that meituan wrote an internal letter in the mooncakes it distributed to employees during the mid-autumn festival.

this is actually a "family letter". it is mid-autumn festival, so it is normal to summarize the achievements and express blessings.

but there is a number in it that everyonepicked outlast year, there were approximately 7.45 million riders who earned income on the meituan platform, with a total compensation of more than 80 billion yuan.

then we divided these two numbers and found that if we calculated according to the "average", the annual income of each rider was only 10,700 yuan, and the monthly income wasonly 900 yuan。

so this matter broke out.

well, meituan does have its own traffic physique.

a colleague brought up this issue at the topic selection meeting, and i said that since i was going to write about it, i should do some careful, thorough and reliable research.

because common sense tells us that the word "average" is often a big trap. for example, the average net worth of me and mr. ma is also over 100 billion. now everyone knows that "being averaged" and "being represented" are illogical.

if you really want to take down meituan, real data is the sharpest sword, right?

so we looked through meituan’s existing official reports and other data, and carefully reviewed the current major controversies and speculations. the following are our deductions and conclusions.

1. the monthly income of a rider is only 900 yuan? in fact, in all first-tier cities, the income of riders is higher than that of ordinary clerks.

the figure of 900 per month is obviously an average. there are both part-time and full-time workers, some who have worked for several years and some who quit after working for a few days. the most basic common sense is that we should not look at the income of "temporary workers", but how much full-time workers earn. this is the most basic common sense.normal value。

according to meituan’s own report, the average monthly income of full-time riders in beijing, shanghai, guangzhou and shenzhen is 11,000 yuan, 9,100-9,500 yuan in second-tier cities, and 7,200 yuan per month in third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities.

to be honest, i was also stunned. objectively speaking, it is not a small number. it is more than the average clerk white-collar workers in cities of the same level.a bit higher。

according to data released by liepin.com in 2021, 47.1% of white-collar workers in third-tier and lower cities have a monthly income of less than 5,000 yuan. from this, it can be estimated that in third-tier and lower cities, the median monthly income of ordinary clerical white-collar workers is about a little over 5,000 yuan. judging from the income figures alone, it is not as much as that of riders.

of course, we must also consider invisible benefits, social status, working hours, etc. but here, perhaps we should look at it from the perspective of the rider:

if you are an unskilled worker who relies on physical strength, around 40 years old, living in a third-tier city or below, with elderly parents and young children, and have a job that earns you a higher monthly net income than an average white-collar worker, would you calculate the hourly wage or pursue taking home the 7,000 or 8,000 yuan every month?

previously, a middle-aged rider told the media that being a rider was the best job he could find in the county. judging from the comparison of income figures and the number of people receiving government salaries in the county, he may be telling the cruel truth.

2. how many people are actually delivering food?

the number of riders is often used as a reference for the employment situation in a society, and riders frequently appear on the screen in short videos. so, how many of them are actually delivering food?

meituan’s own official report followsattendancemade a classification:

high frequency rider(order acceptance days>260 days) 11%, this part can be understood as full-time and full-time employees;

low frequency rider41% of them (the number of days to receive orders is between 30-260 days) can be simply said that they come to work but are often absent, or they can be understood as part-time employees;

amateur rider(number of days to receive orders < 30 days) is 48%, which is equivalent to an intern leaving after working for two weeks.

therefore, the proportion of those who can truly be considered “normal employees” is only 11%, or approximately 820,000 people.

i compared the data from several consecutive years. in fact, from the perspective of market supply and demand, the number of meituan's full-time riders will remain stable for a long time, and there will be no sudden rise or fall, unless there is a particularly large turbulence in the market.

from this point of view, the basic employment situation in chinese society may be more worthy of attention, which are "low-frequency riders" and "amateur riders". these people are likely to use their spare time to take orders, or use food delivery to make a transition in order to maintain income when they are unemployed.

so the job of a food delivery rider is essentially a"transitional" occupations。

this brings up a practical problem: when 89% of riders are here for "transition", it is really difficult to have a simple answer to questions such as social security, welfare, etc.

for example, if you have a job that requires a lot of people to do, but out of the ten applicants, nine of them are willing to come when they want to, or even quit at any time, then what would you do? would you choose to pay everyone daily, with more work and more pay, or a fixed salary with social security deductions?

and, more importantly, applying for this "transitional"people who workhow would you choose?? are they going to take all the money?

i am not saying this to take a stand on anyone's side, but tocomplexityin short, it's not black and white.

3. why do so many people work part-time as food delivery drivers? ——for ordinary people, the most important thing is a stable income.

continuing along the above line of thought, why are 89% of riders “low-frequency amateur” riders?

the problem may be caused byordinary people "increase income"from the perspective of possibility.

if you are a white-collar worker and want to make some extra money after work, if you have a car, you may consider driving an online ride-hailing car, but if you drive a private car, you have to consider the cost of car wear and tear. in addition, the income of online ride-hailing cars also has peaks and troughs, etc. i chatted with part-time online ride-hailing drivers at night. they cruised the streets at night, but they didn't actually receive many orders.

the key is that car owners are still a minority. for ordinary workers, how can they increase their income? isn’t it the easiest to just download the software and register as a crowdsourcing rider to start taking orders?

moreover, the crowdsourcing riders are more flexible in their schedules. for example, if it rains, i don’t want to deliver. however, they often take advantage of the two peak hours at noon and evening to undertake delivery tasks, because thisbest value for money。

according to meituan’s statistics, the average monthly income of crowdsourcing riders in first-tier, second-tier, third-tier and fourth-tier cities is rmb 7,350, rmb 6,200 and rmb 5,550 respectively.transition, it seems ok.

going further, if you are in the transition period of job hunting, and the cycle of changing jobs has been extended, then when you need income, what options do you have?

therefore, the numbers and incomes of part-time riders just prove that ordinary people lack channels for diversified income and stable cash flow.

4. will food delivery riders have a “low status”?

as early as january this year, the china new employment research center released a report saying that the monthly income of qualified deliverymen (more than 30 days) was 6,803 yuan, exceeding couriers, online car-hailing drivers, security guards and other occupations, ranking third among blue-collar workers.

delivery drivers earn money with their hands, sweat and hard work. there is nothing to be ashamed of.labor is the most glorious。

5. are delivery riders guaranteed safety?

meituan's official report mentioned that as of 2023, 4.5 million meituan riders have participated in the national occupational injury insurance pilot. i believe meituan dare not lie about this data.

remember the number at the beginning? the number of full-time riders is actually only 800,000.

i also investigated that meituan also requires each agency station to pay compulsory traffic insurance and other insurance for the riders. in addition, meituan and its partners have subsidized riders working in special weather conditions such as high temperatures in summer and severe cold in winter, with an investment of more than 2.2 billion yuan. we will not evaluate whether it is good or bad or whether it is enough, but just put the data we found here.

6. is it true that a high percentage of delivery riders have bachelor’s degrees or even master’s degrees?

this is a view that many self-media outlets spread, but after research, we believe that it is more of an opinion held by experts, institutions, and even netizens.emotional guessbecause of the employment difficulties in recent years, a large number of highly educated people have chosen to become riders as a transition, and the whole society is paying more and more attention to the delivery worker group.

but the reality is that the authorities have clearly stated that riders do not need to fill in their academic qualifications when they join meituan. even if they do, meituan cannot verify the authenticity of each one on the china higher education student information and career center website, so there is no actual data to support the figures on the rates of bachelor's and master's degrees for various types of delivery riders on the internet.

judging from various other data and analyses, the proportion of undergraduate and master's degrees should not be very high, because riders mainly solve the income problem of "unskilled workers".

7. are delivery riders being “exploited”?

this is a sensitive and controversial topic, but many people are discussing it because it involves emotions.

my colleague suggested we bring it up, but i don’t want to discuss it too deeply.

i just want to remind everyone of a reality from the above data: riders are actually many people.transitional careersmany people are “working in the food delivery industry while looking for opportunities” and choose to leave when a better job becomes available. high mobility is the norm in the food delivery industry.high liquidity, which means that there is a lot of choice in whether to do it or not; andlarge selection, which means that everyone iscalculated。

we are all adults, so there is nothing else to say.

let's take it a step further. if there are 7 million ordinary unskilled workers who need income and no longer deliver food, what other fields in society can provide them with the same income channels? especially in the current economic situation?

in fact, for the country, the food delivery rider industry plays a more important role.employment reservoir, between the in and out, a large number of temporary employment problems have been solved, and more families have basic income security.

after all, the world is big, but eating is the most important thing.