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Even as the economy is on the recovery track — spurring optimism about job creation and better employment prospects — a large part of the labour force, especially in the rural areas, continues to face challenges.
Data from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) indicates that stress in the labour market, which escalated after Covid-19 lockdowns, persists.
As many as 6.36 crore households or 9.11 crore individuals have already worked under the scheme between April and December this fiscal as compared to 7.55 crore households that sought work under the scheme in the whole of last fiscal.
Also see: 25% of workers in unorganised sector registered on e-shram portal
With the pandemic forcing migrant workers to return home, the number of households that worked under the scheme in 2020-21 rose by 37.8 per cent compared to 2019-20.
Severe distress
The high demand for work has also led to the government seeking an additional ₹22,039 crore for the scheme in the Supplementary Demand for Grants.
CMIE (Centre For Monitoring Indian Economy) data reveals that the rural unemployment rate at 6.44 per cent in November this year was lower than the all-India unemployment rate of 7 per cent and urban unemployment rate of 8.21 per cent.
Experts, however, said this could possibly be due to robust sowing activity in the month and believe that the demand for jobs under MGNREGS could continue to remain high.
Labour economist Santosh Mehrotra said the fact that demand for jobs under the scheme has remained consistently high also suggests that the number of workers looking for work in rural areas has increased sharply within the last 18 months. However, the peak season in agriculture is still seeing overwhelming unemployment in rural areas.
“Even prior to the pandemic, there was severe distress in rural areas because the number of new non-farm jobs had fallen to 29 lakh a year between 2013 and 2019 (compared to 75 lakh per year over 2004-12), just as rural youth were getting better educated and were looking for urban jobs. Covid resulted in a sudden reverse migration from urban to rural areas,” Mehrotra, a retired JNU Professor, explained.
Absolute, relative growth
For the first time in 15 years, the absolute number of workers employed in agriculture has increased as per the Periodic Labour Force Survey of 2019-20, he noted. The government indicated the same in the Parliament last week.
The Minister of State for Labour and Employment Rameshwar Teli also informed the Parliament that as per the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) for July 2019 to June 2020, the proportion of workers in the agriculture sector has increased to 45.6 per cent from 42.5 per cent (July 2018-June 2019) whereas it decreased from 12.1 per cent (July 2018-June 2019) to 11.2 per cent (July 2019-June 2020) in the manufacturing sector.
Also see: Post-lockdown, 1.5 million women lost jobs: Report
“The variation may be attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic which resulted in large scale migration of workers towards the rural areas resulting in temporary closure of manufacturing activities which lead to increase in employment in agriculture,” Teli said in response to a question in Lok Sabha on December 9.
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