New business sectors ease employment woes

He is now preparing for a second escape room in Shenzhen－a venue of 600 square meters and employing 18, including directors, actors, scriptwriters and stage designers.

He said the new business form is incredibly popular among acting major graduates.

The industry has carved out a flexible career promotion path and provides an incentive.

Graduates with professional training can earn up to 17,000 yuan monthly, while others are offered about half of that and training is available for amateurs who are fond of the vocation, he said.

In the catering industry, the number of delivery staff had rocketed to 2.95 million on the Meituan platform alone as of August this year, thanks to the prevalence of online orders and take-out services.

However, delivery drivers are not the only new occupation derived from the digital upgrading of the catering industry－a profession dedicated to take-out services and product management is also gaining traction among restaurants.

In October, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and Meituan training school jointly presented official certificates to 62 professional take-out order managers, the first batch of its kind.

Zhang Shan, a dedicated take-out business manager of barbecue restaurant brand Tantang in Shenzhen, said his job includes online shop decor, designing products for internet-based orders, coordinating online promotional campaigns, providing responses and increasing online marketing.

He said online take-out orders could bring several million yuan in revenue each month to the brand's 20 restaurants.

Shops with pet experiences are another new form of business. In September, the number of new pet hotels on Meituan increased 30 percent compared with last year, while searches for pet funerals on the platform roughly doubled.

Sui Zhiyu, a pastry chef with more than a decade of experience, said he found many younger consumers consider their pets their family members, so he decided to focus on the pet cake market.