Jobs Growing at Just 1.8% Yearly, Says Latest Govt. Survey
Image Courtesy: Business Mantraa
The latest report of the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) conducted by the Labour Bureau of the govt. of India paints a bleak picture of job growth in the country. The latest survey report covering July to October 2017 was released recently. It is the seventh report of a new series starting with the baseline survey in the first quarter of 2016. Adding up all the quarterly reports gives a time span of 18 months from April 2016 to October 2017. In this period a grand total of 5.56 lakh jobs were added to the baseline level of 205.22 lakh existing jobs in April 2016. That’s a worryingly low growth of about 1.8% per year.
The survey is carried out in enterprises spanning eight sectors – manufacturing, construction, trade, transport, accommodation & restaurants, IT/BPO, education and health. These sectors constitute around 81% of the total employment of units with 10 or more workers (as enumerated in the 6th Economic Census of 2013-14) and approximately 15% of the total employment (131.29 million persons) at the time of the 6th EC.
Within this limitation, the QES does indicate the trend in employment growth in the country and is the only regular govt. source of jobs data.
Jobs in the manufacturing sector, which employed 101.17 lakh workers in April 2016,had grown by a mere 1.65 lakh in the course of 18 months, thus showing a job growth of just 1.6%. Construction sector which had 3.67 lakh workers originally lost 38,000 workers ending up with a net job loss of over 10%. Accommodation and restaurants sector was another sector that showed a job loss, though minor, of about 0.3%.
Maximum jobs were created in the health sector which increased from about 12 lakh in April 2016 to 13 lakh one and a half years later, a jump of about 8.5%. Education too showed an increase of about 4%.
The latest QES 7 report says that about 49% of the workers it surveyed were regular employees while 33% were contract workers and 17% casual workers. Interestingly, in the three quarters of 2017 for which data is available, regular employment fell while both contract and casual employment increased.
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