E-commerce: creating or destroying employment?

March 7, Gockai teacher published a commentary, "debunk the business of creating employment lies," the core point of view is: E-commerce created by the employment will never be more than the elimination of employment, the more online employment created, the more people under the line of unemployment, the more multiplied, this is the obvious truth.

This view implies a premise, that is, in the social http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/18145.html "> The total amount of merchandise sales remain unchanged, only discuss sales channels of employment." In this premise, the share of the online channel is entirely from the line down the channel to rob, so "the more online employment created, the more people who are unemployed under the line more multiplied."

However, this premise is not fully consistent with our experience, like every guest (including every customer before PPG), Taobao and other platforms on a lot of goods, the price is cheap because they activate the excess capacity, improve the channel coverage, so that manufacturers can produce, sell more products, or that they have not only divided the stock, There is also an increase in the total amount of merchandise sold throughout the society.

In the case of total sales of social goods, as long as total sales of offline channels are growing, we cannot be certain that jobs created on the line lead to more offline unemployment. A typical example is: Many shop owners because they can not afford to open shop stores, and manufacturers also because the lack of access to the offline channel to sell the goods to the shop. In other words: if there is no online channel, these jobs are completely non-existent. Therefore, the job of these shop owners is entirely new, not from the offline channel transfer. And the total offline channel sales are not because these people opened shop and significantly atrophy, indicating that their jobs have not been reduced.

Even when the total amount of channel sales in the online decrease, as long as the total social merchandise sales to maintain a certain growth, the online creation of posts may still be more than offline lost jobs. For example, suppose that the total retail sales of consumer goods in the last year amounted to $100 million, all of which were completed by 1000 jobs on the offline channel. Total retail sales rose to $110 million this year, with 20 million on the line and 150 new jobs, while offline was squeezed by 10 million, reducing 100 jobs, which could still create 50 new jobs.

One more step, even if the online channel really leads to the net loss of all sales channels, it may still contribute to the overall employment of the society. This contribution also comes from the online channel for the total amount of social goods sales pulling effect. Imagine the next year's total retail sales rose to 120 million yuan, all by the online channel completed, 900 jobs, compared to last year's 1000 offline posts, sales channels of the net loss of 100. But as total social merchandise sales rose from 100 million to 120 million, 20 million of the new demand led to 200 production jobs, as well as the creation of 100 new jobs in total.

Therefore, Gockai teacher about "the creation of E-commerce will never be more than the elimination of employment, the more jobs you create online, the more people who lose their jobs multiply." The idea of the relationship between efficiency and total is fragmented (that is, efficiency is not just about reducing costs, it's more common), focusing on sales channels, The online post and post posts as a simple 0 and game, ignoring the e-commerce in the pull of social aggregate demand, and then create more related posts value. Gockai did not provide data to support this view, which is far from perfect in theory.

The main reason for this view seems to be that the Gockai teacher thinks: "E-commerce satisfies only people's demand for shopping," and ignores the fact that even if there is only demand, there is also the number of size and satisfaction rate. There is no doubt that the essence of the Internet economy is the promotion of efficiency, and according to past experience: the cost savings of efficiency is not the end, but the starting point. It means that the expansion of the production/service scale and the increase of the output value of the industry means that the pulling of related industries will eventually bring more full demand and more jobs. Can predict: Electronic commerce is no exception.