OXFAM India’s latest
report mind the Gap 2019 – State of Employment in India makes the following observation.
According to the OXFAM lack
of quality jobs and increasing wage disparity are key markers of inequality in
the India labour market.
The report states
regressive social norms continue to hamper women’s participation in the
workforce on an average; women are paid 34% less than similarly qualified male
workers for performing the same tasks.
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| Read More about-- Female Labour Participation |
In 2015, 92% of women
and 82% of men earned a monthly wage less than 10,000 in India.
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Despite the rhetoric of
job creation and ensuring gender justice, ground reality is sobering. The reports
highlight the question about India’s growth data and emphasizes that they do
not reflect in the growth of jobs and the largest number of jobs were generated
in unorganized sector.
Job generation was
adversely impacted after demonetization and hit the women workforce most. Women
were forced to move out the labour force to make way of men to get the few jobs
that were available.
Demonetization period
witnessed a drop in households with two or more persons employed. Between January
and October 2016, the percentage of households where two or two or more persons
were employed was 34.8% and this dropped to 31.8% post-demonetization, with
women workers becoming the first causalities of job losses.
The report highlighted
grim picture of ground realities the report states that caste and class
continue to play crucial roles in determining the employment for men and women,
especially in stigmata vocations like sanitation, rag-picking and jobs in the
leather industry.
The report calls for a
shift in development focus towards labour-intensive sectors to create more jobs
and pushes for better work conditions to make jobs more inclusive. The report
calls for substantially higher investments in health and education to improve productivity.
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| Unemployment in India |
According to the GDP, the Job creation is lesser in India
World Bank, in its publication South Asia Economic Focus, Spring
2018: jobless Growth, says that over the long-term, India has been creating
7,50,000 new jobs for every 1% rise in gross domestic product (GDP); at an
average of 7% growth, India should be creating at least 5.25 million jobs.
The Agriculture and Job Connectivity
According to Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy data the number
of youth (15-29 years) employed in agriculture fell between 2004-5 and 2011-12.
However, after 2012, as non-agricultural job growth slowed, the number of
youths in agriculture increased significantly.
Manufacturing - Jobs reduced
Manufacturing jobs also reduced in absolute terms, from 58.9 million in
2011-12 to 48.3 million in 2015-16.
The leaked NSSO 2017-18 data have shown that while the open
unemployment rate (which does not measure disguised unemployment and informal
poor-quality jobs that abound in the economy) by the usual status has jumped to
6.1% in 2017 -18 that never went over 2.6% between 1977-78 and 2011-12.
Growth without Jobs
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| Source - OXFAM India |
India’s growth creates fewer jobs than before. Fixing India’s job
crisis is impossible unless the government decides to increase investment in
public services, education and health. Together these sectors can compensate
for the bulk of the work demand in India.
The challenge of fixing India’s job crisis is an unachievable task
for any-term government. The country’s private sector has done well in battling
the unemployment challenge so far, and improving the ease of doing business is
step in right direction. The youth is getting more and more educated but the growth of
employment is not satisfactory.
People lost jobs because of
cash crunch after demonetization. There is no correlation between GDP growth
and employment rate.
Falling Female Participation
Female
participation in workplace has been declining since 1977, and continued falling
to 2015-16. According to Centre for
Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), a think tank, only women suffer
when there’s an employment problem, while jobs for men increased by 0.9
million, 2.4 million women fell off the employment map in first four months of
2017.
The trend for this
year points to a continuing story of Indian women increasingly clocking out of
the workplace. It might not seem like it at first glance. You see Women
employed everywhere, in ad agencies and start-ups, on construction sites and in
fields, in shops and restaurants, in schools and anganwadis, flying
airplanes and driving taxis. However, the data contradict about recruitment.
First, female
enrolment at secondary level (15-16 years old) rose to 85% within matter of five years (to 2015). Second,
as these older girls entered secondary school, younger siblings care in the
family had to be now performed by adult women rather than the eldest girl. In
the household income with rapid growth in agriculture, the demand for female
women increased.
A very important
reason for rural female workforce falling 2004-05 was the decline in household
level animal farming, which has rationally been performed by women.
Causes of unemployment among youth
Large
number of youths in India are unemployed, there several causes of staying
unemployed. Doing job in foreign country is kind of craze among youth nowadays,
young people don’t find India worthy to staying or doing job here, when it's
about government jobs there is a huge competition due to population and to get government
job, while in India government jobs are mostly occupied by older people.
Other
reason is youth are least concerned about get in job and more in art sectors –
like singing, playing instruments, dancing etc. etc. Well skilled youth are not
able to get skilled relevant job easily in the country, other reason is least
savings Indian companies are very much hard to handle as they put extra work
load on the employee with less salary with least incentives.
Solutions
If India wants to
absorb large number of labour force, it should be more focused to increase in
expenditure to create more opportunities.
There is a need to
execute well planned schemes and a huge infrastructure has to be created.
Economy cannot run on single engine that is on public sector alone, so private
sectors should come forward. Agriculture sector have to sustain the growth of
poor people.
Education system
needs to be re-oriented towards vocational and practical teachings. Huge chunk
of women participation in workforce is needed.
Government should
give chance to youth in government jobs like judges, teachers, doctors etc.
there is a need to generate more jobs in public sector.
There should be
cluster development to support job creation in micro, small and medium
enterprises.
The growth of
population should be checked in order to solve unemployment problem. Family
planning programme should be implemented widely and effectively. The link
between good urbanization and jobs growth is positive, and unless India’s
urbanization is concentrated in narrower areas and serviced by good
infrastructure, job creation will be sub-optimal.
Indian government has failed to fix India’s job crisis, high
unemployment and slow employment growth have been a historical reality of the
country’s labour market. India’s jobless growth since the 1990s only made it
worse.
More than half of India’s population depends on the agriculture
sector for work.
For reading more follow- https://www.oxfamindia.org/
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