作者：老默
早上醒来，先看手机。招聘软件没有新消息，昨天投出去的简历依旧没有回音。吃过早饭，继续投简历。中午随便吃点，下午等电话。房租快到期了，银行卡里的余额越来越少。到了晚上，算一算这个月还剩多少钱，工作还是没有着落。这时，社保的事找上门了。人社部提出，要通过“数据找人”，识别尚未参保的人员，动员他们参加社会保险。失业的人说，工作都没有，拿什么交？2025年，全国社会保障基金投资收益达到3906.72亿元，投资收益率为13.22%，累计投资收益超过2.29万亿元。再看看退休以后。在深圳、上海等发达地区，普通企业退休人员每月领取三四千元养老金并不少见；一些机关事业单位退休人员，养老金加上职业年金，每月一万多元，甚至两万元以上。在职时，有些岗位还有补充医疗、住房公积金、职业年金等福利。工资条上的数字，并不等于全部待遇。退休以后，基本养老金之外，还有职业年金等补充收入。农村老人又是另一番光景。很多人年轻时靠种地养家，没有单位为自己缴纳职工养老保险。年纪大了，主要依靠城乡居民基本养老保险，每月领取几百元。有些老人还要种点地、打点零工，补贴日常开销。他们并非没有参保，也并非人人没有其他收入。但年轻时缺少稳定的职工养老缴费记录，老了以后能领到的养老金，往往与职工退休待遇相差很大。有人退休后每月领一两万元，有人领三四千元，还有人靠几百元过日子。有人不是不想缴，而是眼下没有钱缴；有人不是不需要保障，而是忙了一辈子，能依靠的保障仍然有限。失业的人还在等一份工作，种了一辈子地的老人还在盘算每个月的几百元。数据找到了尚未参保的人。至于他们手里有多少钱，日子还过不过得下去，是另一张名单上的事。当工作越来越难找，收入越来越难挣，普通人已经在为生计焦头烂额的时候，还要用越来越精准的技术找到他们、催促他们缴费——这种只看见缴费责任、却看不见生存困境的冷酷，才是整件事最令人不齿的地方。
编辑：黄吉洲 校对：程筱筱 翻译：沈美花
Unemployed People Haven’t Found a Job Yet, but the Money-Collectors Have Already Come Knocking
Author: Lao Mo
Waking up in the morning, the first thing is checking the phone. The recruitment apps have no new messages, and the resumes sent out yesterday still have received no response.
After eating breakfast, continue sending out resumes. Grab a quick bite for lunch, and wait for phone calls in the afternoon. The rent is due soon, and the balance in the bank card is getting smaller and smaller. When night comes, calculate how much money is left for this month, while a job is still nowhere in sight.
At this juncture, social security matters come knocking on the door.
The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security proposed using “data to find people” (shùjù zhǎo rén) to identify personnel who have not yet participated in social insurance and mobilize them to join the social insurance system.
Unemployed people say: I don’t even have a job, what am I supposed to pay with?
In 2025, the national social security fund’s investment income reached 390.672 billion yuan, with an investment yield rate of 13.22%, and cumulative investment income surpassed 2.29 trillion yuan.
Now look at the situation after retirement.
In developed regions such as Shenzhen and Shanghai, it is not uncommon for ordinary corporate retirees to receive three to four thousand yuan a month in basic pension; for some retirees from government agencies and public institutions (jīguān shìyè dānwèi), their basic pension combined with occupational annuities (zhíyè niánjīn) reaches over 10,000 yuan, or even more than 20,000 yuan per month.
While employed, some positions also offer benefits such as supplementary medical insurance, the housing provident fund (zhūfáng gōngjījīn), and occupational annuities. The numbers on the pay stub do not represent total compensation. After retirement, besides the basic pension, there are also supplementary incomes such as occupational annuities.
For rural elderly people, it is an entirely different picture.
Many of them relied on farming to support their families when they were young, without an employer to pay urban employee pension insurance on their behalf. In their old age, they rely mainly on the basic pension insurance for urban and rural residents, receiving a few hundred yuan per month. Some elderly people still have to farm a bit of land or do odd jobs to supplement their daily living expenses.
They are not uninsured, nor is it the case that none of them have other income. However, lacking stable payment records for urban employee pensions when they were young, the pensions they can collect in old age often differ vastly from the retirement treatment of urban employees.
Some people collect 10,000 to 20,000 yuan a month after retirement, some collect 3,000 to 4,000 yuan, and still others get by on a few hundred yuan.
Some people don’t refrain from paying because they don’t want to, but because they currently have no money to pay; some people don’t lack a need for protection, but after laboring for a lifetime, the security they can rely on remains limited.
The unemployed are still waiting for a job, and the elderly who farmed all their lives are still calculating the few hundred yuan each month.
Big data has found the people who haven’t enrolled in social security. As for how much money they have in their hands and whether they can go on living their daily lives—that is a matter on another list entirely.
When jobs are increasingly hard to find, income is increasingly hard to earn, and ordinary people are already overwhelmed just trying to make a living, using increasingly precise technologies to track them down and urge them to pay fees—this cold indifference that sees only the obligation to contribute fees while turning a blind eye to the hardship of survival is precisely the most despicable aspect of the entire affair.
Editor: Huang Jizhou
Proofreader: Cheng Xiaoxiao
Translator: Shen Meihua
