Flexible labor is important for manufacturing. The launch of the Manufacturing Labor Market Prosperity Index took place online. At the meeting, a number of experts pointed out that flexible labor is very important in the manufacturing industry. Compared with regular workers, flexible labor can better cope with short-term changes in orders, which is conducive to a part of the order fluctuations in the manufacturing enterprises to reduce labor costs in general. At the same time, workers can also change jobs between companies and maintain relatively high incomes.

Lu Ming, executive director of the China Development Research Institute at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said that with the rise of the concept of "flexible manufacturing," the ability of production capacity to respond in a timely manner to rapid changes in consumer demand has become an important source of competitiveness for manufacturing companies. Now there are some flexible employment characteristics in the manufacturing industry, which is very important for the manufacturing industry.

"On the one hand, different companies have fluctuations in orders, some times companies have more orders, some times companies have less orders. So through flexible labor, we can adapt to the fluctuation of enterprise orders. On the other hand, there is an increasing demand for personalization of consumer goods. For example, network anchors say 'I want to push a pair of jeans' when they bring goods on the air, and maybe the pants are sold 100 pairs, and at this time the orders show the characteristics of small quantitative and short-term, so it is very suitable to adopt the production mode of flexible labor." Lu Ming further cited an example.

Xing Chunbing, a professor at the School of Agriculture and Rural Development of Renmin University of China, said, "Usually when we talk about flexible employment, we may think of the service industry more, and pay less attention to the manufacturing industry. Therefore, it is very meaningful to focus on flexible employment in the manufacturing industry."

It is reported that from the first half of 2020, the China Development Research Institute of Shanghai Jiaotong University, the team of Urban Cool Thinkers and the New Citizen Institute of Industry and Innovation have been working together to develop big data on flexible labor.

In Lu Ming's view, the manufacturing flexible labor big data can largely reflect seasonal changes, growth trends and the impact of systemic shocks in the manufacturing industry. Therefore, the changes in wages and hiring price index can be used to build a high-frequency labor market boom index for the manufacturing industry, which can provide a reference for macro policy making and enterprise decision making.