China’s TikTok, Douyin, says it created 36 million jobs in the last year, with lots of livestreamers

The central government created a new job title in July for ‘online marketing professionals’, in an attempt to help the job market recover. Beijing says there are around 200 million ‘flexible workers’ in China, including a growing number of online content creators. — SCMP

Short-video platform Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, says it created 36 million jobs domestically over the year-long period from last August in the video and livestreaming sector – one of the few areas where employment is flourishing in the nation’s challenging post-coronavirus labour market.

Among that total, about 20 million are individual content creators and livestreaming hosts, while 8.6 million came from their team members. The rest were from Douyin’s corporate accounts and multichannel networks that help manage and market multiple accounts, according to a report published on Wednesday by the company in partnership with Renmin University.