Job Growth Plummets, Says New Govt. Report

The latest Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) Report released by the govt.’s Labour Bureau reveals that just 64,000 jobs were added in eight selected sectors during April-July 2017 down by 65% compared to the previous quarter. Compared to the base level estimate of total employment of 205.22 lakh as on 1 April 2016, the Indian economy has added 4.8 lakh jobs in 15 months. That’s an increase of just 2.3%.

The QES covers a sample of 11179 units in Manufacturing, Construction, Trade, Transport, Education, Health, Accommodation & Restaurant and Information & Technology (IT)/ Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sectors. These eight sectors make up about 81% of employment in units with 10 or more workers.

What is worrisome is that the manufacturing sector saw a decline of 87,000 jobs in the April-July 2017 quarter as opposed to an increase of 1.02 lakh in the preceding quarter. Two sectors witnessed the most increases making up for the massive dip in manufacturing jobs. These are education which saw an increase of 99,000 jobs and health where 31,000 jobs were added.

Employment data put out by the govt. comes with a very big time lag and hence loses its significance. However, the latest QES report – the 6th in the series of revamped surveys started in 2016 – confirms the extreme volatility and low rate of growth indicated by other estimates. It also rebuffs the govt.’s dodgy claims of a very robust job growth in the current year. Finance Minister ArunJaitley had said in his Budget speech, that 70 lakh jobs are expected to be created this year.

He was basing himself – rather perilously – on questionable data put out by some economists on the basis of studying EPFO enrollment and other such payroll based databases.

CMIE had pointed out that in calendar year 2017, just 14 lakh jobs were added in overall employment – an increase of just 0.35% over a total base of 40.4 crore workforce, contradicting the FM’s claim of an 11.7% increase.

The 6th QES results show that lo paying and irregular jobs – which mark the education and health sectors – continue to be the mainstay of jobs growth in India while the real economy languishes in lethal doldrums. As CMIE points out, investment ratio has fallen from 34% in 2011-12 to 26.4% in 2017-18 and hence new investment proposal announcements have fallen from Rs.25.5 trillion to under Rs.10 trillion in the same period.

This year’s budget shows that the govt. is in denial over all this and continues to remain committed to a tight fisted fiscal policy with budgeted expenditure for 2018-19 slated to be 3% lower than 2017-18.

Rather than relying on dodgy data and gimmickry, the Modi govt. needs to pull up its socks and get down to addressing the jobs crisis – something that it had promised in 2014 but has spectacularly failed to do.