Freedom of Anxiety: Flexible Labor, Anxiety and Livelihood Rationality of Flexible Employees: Based on Floating Population Survey Data in the Yangtze River Delta in 2020

With the widespread application of Internet technology, a variety of new work patterns and corresponding labor forms have emerged. The work in "space" and "time" two dimensions are different from the traditional labor organization. Due to the uniqueness, labor has also gained greater autonomy. The empirical survey shows that the most preferred subjective cognition of flexible employees is "freedom" and "flexibility". However, further analysis shows that flexible workers express their "free" labor experience while deeply implying their anxiety about more uncertainty in the future. The era of flexible labor does make labor more flexible and even more free, but "flexible" labor also makes workers' livelihoods and circumstances more uncertain, and personal pressure and the sense of uncertainty about the future are stronger than that in any previous period. The freedom on the surface has deep anxiety behind it. This article believes that from the current actual situation, the core concern of flexible employment workers is still the issue of livelihoods. The rationality of livelihoods based on breadwinning is still the logic of action of this group of workers, which is the biggest rea-lity of all kinds of new forms of business as we understand them, including the gig economy.