When several major ride-hailing platforms in China announced reductions in their commission rates earlier in 2025, it wasn't just a business headline, it was a bonus for drivers. For them, even a slight decrease in the platform commission on each fare can add up to hundreds more yuan (dozens of U.S. dollars) at the end of a long month.

One of these drivers, surnamed Zhou, is a 37-year-old former technician at an Internet company in Langfang, Hebei Province, who is the major bread winner of his family. "Every bit counts when you're on the road for 10 hours a day," Zhou told Beijing Review, showing the new, more detailed and transparent bill on his driver app that includes final payment from the passenger, the service fee charged by the platform, bonuses issued by the platform and the fee paid to his account. "Seeing the numbers change feels like someone finally heard us."

Zhou is a member of China's vast and rapidly evolving "new blue-collar" workforce, a cohort of nearly 70 million that includes delivery riders, couriers, and, most numerously, ride-hailing drivers. Recent platform policy shifts, far from being mere operational tweaks, reflect a deeper, national recalibration aimed at stabilizing, upskilling and professionalizing this critical yet once-precarious segment of the economy.

Income increase

A landmark report titled the Employment Landscape and Occupational Performance of Ride-Hailing Drivers, published by Capital University of Economics and Business (CUEB) in September 2025, puts hard numbers to the lived experience of millions like Zhou. With 7.48 million licensed ride-hailing drivers nationwide, the sector has become one of the primary employers of labor, particularly for middle-aged men laid off from other areas or leaving manufacturing work to seek more income.

The data sketch a profile of resilience under pressure: The average driver is 40 years old, and a staggering 62.8 percent are their family's only bread winner. They log an average of 6.4 hours of work each day, with many pushing toward 10 hours to chase extra incentives. Their average monthly income of 7,623 yuan ($1,050) ranks second among six major blue-collar jobs, offering a tangible, and hard-won, upgrade from factory or construction work.

The recent commission adjustments bring a complex financial reality into focus. The report, based on a survey of over 5,400 drivers, found a median commission rate of 18.8 percent.

Zhang Chenggang, an associate professor at the School of Labor Economics at the CUEB and the leading author of the report, told China Media Group that the commissions taken by ride-hailing platforms do not equate to profit.

"The commission taken by ride-hailing platforms is not simply recorded as platform profit. Apart from returning a large portion of the funds to drivers and passengers through subsidies, it also covers various costs including algorithm-based dispatch and system maintenance, payment and settlement security, customer service and arbitration, insurance and claims settlement, as well as compliance and taxes," Zhang said.

"The core issue of platform commissions is the complex challenge of how to balance efficiency with fairness and innovation with security under the new economic paradigm. To genuinely achieve decent employment for drivers and the sustainable development of the industry, joint efforts from the government, platform companies and society as a whole are required," Zhang added.

Expanding incentives

Traditionally, blue-collar workers are primarily industrial workers in the secondary and tertiary sectors. Blue-collar work has been perceived as primarily involving manual labor, with a significant concentration in the construction and manufacturing industries. In contrast to this traditional group, "new blue-collar" workers possess more and higher-level skills. They engage in work that combines both physical and mental labor, often with greater flexibility, in fields such as advanced manufacturing and modern services. Both their income and educational attainment levels are generally higher than those of traditional blue-collar workers.

In addition to ride-hailing drivers, "new blue-collar" workers play a diverse range of roles that fuse physical service with digital fluency and technical skills; and the benefits, welfare and future of these careers have become hot topics of debate.

For example, the image of the delivery rider is being upgraded from an errand runner to a potential technician. At the forefront is the Modern Grassroots Workers Academy, widely referred to as the "rider academy," which was inaugurated at Guangzhou Polytechnic University (GPU). Jointly launched by the Department of Education of Guangdong Province and e-commerce giant JD in December 2025, the academy is China's first vocational education platform dedicated to delivery personnel.

The academy leverages the vocational education resources of GPU and integrates the practical scenarios and job resources of JD. It plans to provide systematic, step-by-step growth support to over 100,000 JD full-time riders and frontline delivery personnel in Guangdong over the next three years. Vocational skill certificates can contribute bonus points toward rider promotion and job transfers.

The curriculum includes both advanced technical skills, such as intelligent dispatch operations and unmanned delivery equipment maintenance, as well as training in areas including traffic safety, emotional management and career planning. JD's technological expertise in drones and smart logistics will also be translated into courses, paving the way for riders to transition into new roles such as drone pilots and intelligent operations and maintenance specialists.

Ouyang Li, Vice President of GPU, explained that the training format will be highly flexible, divided into three models: short-term (1-2 months), long-term (3 years) and enterprise-specific training, fully accommodating riders' work schedules. The academy will adopt a blended "online + offline" teaching model, allowing riders to study during their free time. The long-term program of the rider academy is expected to enroll its first students in spring 2026, with an initial cohort of 500 trainees planned.

The image of the factory worker is also being redefined on the shop floors of China's advanced manufacturing hubs. Roles like industrial robot system operators and maintenance engineers represent the new archetype of the blue-collar worker—less about manual assembly and more about technical oversight and data literacy. At smart factories, such as Changan Automobile's digital facility in Chongqing Municipality, technicians act as "health management doctors" for automated production lines, performing diagnostics, programming and preventive maintenance on hundreds of industrial robots.

"We utilize a variety of monitoring instruments and maintenance equipment to conduct data collection, condition monitoring, fault diagnosis and maintenance operations for industrial robots. Daily systematic inspections are carried out on the industrial robots, and any issues encountered are promptly addressed," Ran Yunwen, an industrial robot system operations and maintenance engineer at Changan, told Xinhua News Agency.

This professional shift is driven by a dual imperative: national industrial upgrading and corporate competitiveness. As industries push toward "intelligent manufacturing," the demand for workers who can bridge the gap between the physical operation of machinery and its digital control systems has skyrocketed.

"In many manufacturing enterprises, the line between technicians and industrial workers is becoming blurred. 'New blue-collars' are becoming 'whitened'," notes a report from Outlook Weekly of Xinhua News Agency. This "whitening" signifies not just cleaner work environments, but higher skill requirements, increased autonomy and better pay.

Policy frameworks in support of their growth are strengthening. The formal inclusion of jobs like "online delivery rider" in the national occupational classification system by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security in 2025 grants them institutional recognition. Beijing and other cities are piloting two-way mechanisms that allow highly skilled technical workers to access additional benefits, such as housing subsidies, once reserved for academic elites.

"From an economic development perspective, 'new blue-collar' workers are playing a bigger role in driving improvements in production efficiency, promoting the optimization and upgrading of enterprises and industrial structures, and injecting new vitality into economic growth. We should strengthen measures to protect their rights and interests," Zhang said.

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson

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