February 9, 2014
As India heads towards a bruising general election, one of the key issues in the minds of both people and political parties is jobs. Big parties and their star campaigners can already be heard harping on the theme. The reason is that the jobs scenario has been decidedly grim for more than a decade.
Jobs scenario has been grim for more than a decade.
February 9, 2014
As India heads towards a bruising general election, one of the key issues in the minds of both people and political parties is jobs. Big parties and their star campaigners can already be heard harping on the theme. The reason is that the jobs scenario has been decidedly grim for more than a decade.
Jobs scenario has been grim for more than a decade.
Between 2000 and 2012, jobs have increased at an abysmal rate of just 2.2% per year. Agricultural employment, the mainstay for over two thirds of the people, has practically not grown in these thirteen years. Manufacturing jobs have grown by just 4% per annum as industry languishes. The one sector showing big growth is services, but as recently released survey findings from the NSSO show, the bulk of it is in retail trade, construction and personal services, and these are transitory, low-paying and tough jobs.
This emerges from a comparison of jobs data from NSSO report for 2011-12 released last week, with a similar report from 1999-2000. This has been a sustained period of economic growth measured in terms of GDP.
The construction sector has exploded in terms of jobs, which increased from 16 million to 50 million at a blistering pace of nearly 17% per year. In rural areas construction jobs grew from about 9.4 million in 1999-2000 to 37.2 million in 2011-12, a growth of almost 300%. This makes it the second biggest employer in rural areas after agriculture. Contrary to popular wisdom, it is not the high visibility construction boom in cities that fuelled this job growth. Experts believe that public works in the UPA government's job guarantee scheme (MGNREGS) account for some of this boom. Another boost was given by increased capital investment in agriculture, again for civil works. In urban areas, employment in the construction sector doubled from about 6.2 million in 2000 to 12.5 million in 2012.
Jobs in trade, hotels and restaurants, which includes all petty shop-keepers, hawkers, roadside food sellers etc. increased from about 36 million to 53 million. Similar rise was seen in "other services" which includes personal services like cooks, maids, guards, washermen and so on.
What kind of income does a person working on a road project or a loader in a transport company get? The NSSO report for 2011-12 compares real wages – adjusted to inflation – of casual laborers in works other than public works (like MGNREGS). In 2000, the real wage of such a casual laborer in rural areas was Rs.26.13 which increased to Rs 42.06 in 2012. That's an increase of about 61% in 13 years. In urban areas, casual laborer wages increased from Rs.35.95 to Rs.49.13 over the same period – an increase of about 37%.
Clearly the booming sectors that are drawing people away from failing agriculture are very low paying. Also, these jobs are often seasonal, mostly contractual and with very minimalist facilities or benefits. Hence, people won't get counted as unemployed but their employment will be subsistence level.
Courtesy: TNN
