Comments
Nine organised sectors of the economy appear to have weathered the Covid second wave well, employing 3.08 crore in the April-June quarter, which is 29 per cent higher than the 2.37 crore people they had on their rolls in 2013-14 (according to the sixth Economic Census).
Union Labour Minister Bhupender Yadav released here on Monday the first Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) of 2021-22 on employment and related variables in nine non-farm sectors of manufacturing, construction, trade, transport, education, health, accommodation & restaurant, IT/BPO and financial services. The Labour Bureau survey covered 10,867 samples from 5,63,440 units.
Lockdown effect
According to the Survey, 3.08 crore workers were employed in these nine sectors before the lockdown. But after the lockdown, in July 2020, the number came down to 2.85 crore, which means about 24 lakh people lost their jobs. The Bureau, however, did not elaborate on how it arrived at the pre-lockdown employment figures.
Of the 3.08 crore total employment estimated in the nine sectors, manufacturing accounted for nearly 41 per cent followed by education (22 per cent), and health (8 per cent). “Trade as well as and IT/BPO each engaged seven per cent of the total estimated number of workers,” Yadav said. Due to the Covid second wave, two sectors — trade and accommodation & restaurant — saw job losses.
Impressive growth
The “most impressive growth”, of 152 per cent, has been recorded by the IT/BPO sector, followed by health (77 per cent), transport (68 per cent), financial services (48 per cent), construction (42 per cent), education (39 per cent), and manufacturing (22 per cent), Yadav said.
Employment in trade dipped by 25 per cent and Accommodation & Restaurant, the decline was by 13 per cent.
Asked why the Economic Census of 2013-14 was based for the QES, Chairman of the expert group and economist SP Mukherjee said the Sixth Economic Census has figures in complete sense. He said though it is unscientific to compare the two sets of figures, the numbers are not estimates and so give a complete picture of the employment scenario. “The PLFS (Periodic Labour Force Survey) does not speak about establishments. So it will not give an idea of this particular sector of Indian economy,” he added.
According to the QES, nearly 90 per cent of the establishments work with fewer than 100 workers, though 34.8 per cent of the IT/BPO establishments had at least 100 and 13.8 per cent more than 500 workers. In the Health sector, 18 per cent of the establishments had 100 or more workers.
Per the Sixth Economic Census, 95 per cent of the establishments had fewer than 100 workers. In the IT/BPO sector, in 2013-14, the while 19 per cent of the establishments had 100 or more workers, 6 per cent had 500 or more.
The overall percentage of woman workers stood at 29, slightly lower than the 31 reported by the Sixth Economic Census. “Regular workers constitute 88 per cent of the estimated workforce in the nine sectors, with only 2 per cent being casual workers. However, 18 per cent of workers in the construction sector are contractual employees and 13 per cent casual workers,” the QES said.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.