BEIJING — China's new profession of delivery personnel for online orders has played an important role in creating jobs and stabilizing employment, a report from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security showed.

In 2019, around 3.99 million delivery personnel for online orders registered with Meituan Dianping, a major online food delivery and ticketing services platform, up 23.3 percent year-on-year. The number further increased by 457,800 from late January to the end of March this year.

Flexible working hours are the biggest drawcard of this profession. Nearly 60 percent of the delivery personnel spend less than four hours per day working this job.

Delivery personnel for online orders receive and check customer orders through mobile internet platforms and deliver orders to designated places within a certain period of time according to intelligent-planned routes of the platforms, said the report.

Different from express delivery and warehousing logistics, delivery for online orders provides local point-to-point services in fields including restaurant takeout, grocery delivery, business-to-consumer retail, and same-city express delivery.

The report also estimated that the demand for delivery personnel for online orders will be around 30 million in the next five years as online catering and retail businesses grow rapidly.