The growth of employment in India suggests that there has been a decline in the rate of growth of employment at current daily status basis, from 2.7 percent in 1983-1994 per annum to 1.07 percent per annum in 1993-94 to 2000. The growth rate of GDP on the contrary was higher with respect to growth rate of employments. There has been a decline in the employment intensity.
The 55th Round of NSSO survey suggests that Growth Rate of employment was associated with a decline in labour force. The decline in the absolute number of unemployment (expressed in terms of unemployed as a percentage of labour force) increased during 1994-2000.
Agriculture is the largest sector, where most of the people are employed. During 1994-2000, there was a near stagnation in the growth rate of employment in agriculture, which declined from 60 percent in 1993-94 to 57 percent in 1999-2000.
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Employment growth in all the sub-sectors within service excepting community and social services exceeded 5 percent per annum.
Organised sector Employment:
Among the total workforce 8 to 10 percent of the workforce of the country is employed in the organised sector. There was an increase of employment in the private organised sector after economic liberalisation.
Public sector employment accounts for more 67% of total employment in the organised sector, so with the more or less non-recruitment syndrome prevailing in the public sector for last one decade, the growth in the organised sector employment has not increased in absolute terms.
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Rather there has been a decline in the employment in the public sector due to restructuring and VRS in 2001 over 2000, by nearly 1% and in 2002 by 1.2%. The employment of women in the organised sector both public and private sector as on march 31, 2001 was 4.9 mn, constituting about 17.8 percent of the total organised sector employment registering an increase of 0.5 percent over the previous year. Women employees are engaged mostly in social and personal service sectors (55.6 %), manufacturing (20.6 percent), and Finance insurance and real estate business 4.7%. According to special group of planning commission total organised sector contributed only 8.34% of total employment. Out of this 8.34% public sector account for 5.77% and private sector account for 2.57 percent.
In view of decline in the rate of employment and keeping creation of employment a top most priority a special group on targeting ten million employment opportunities per year over the Tenth-Plan Period was constituted by planning commission under the chairmanship of Dr. S.P. Gupta, Member, Planning Commission. The group noted a decline of growth of population but there was an increase of unemployment rate during 1993-94 and 1999-2000 although the overall growth performance of the economy has been better than previous decade. (1983-1994).
In view of decline of employment growth elasticities, the special group that, apart from normal increase in the growth of employment in the present initiatives there is a special need for paying attention to the employment intensive sector such as agriculture, small and medium industries, information technology, construction tourism, financial sector, education and health with the adequate initiative, absolute synergies of these sector’s can create 100 min-jobs in tenth Five year plan. The report also identified Ministry and Department wise targets as well as programmes so that million jobs can be created every year.
The Gupta working group also observes that employment elasticity came down from 0.52 from 1983- 93 to 0.16 from 1993-2000. The decline was prominent in almost all the sectors excepting transport, financial services and real estate.
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It has also been found that in the new realm the potential of private sector is more in the generation of employment than public sector, as far as manufacturing sector is concerned. Private sector accounts for 75 percent of total manufacturing output. Agriculture and allied activities, Hotel, tourism, health and education and construction are most employment generating sectors in the economy.
The economic survey of the government of India summarises some recommendations of special group which are as follows.
Labour Laws:
As labour laws are in the concurrent List, state government may be allowed to make amendments according to their requirement. But such amendments must take note of adequate safetyness.
The special group further recommends for pensioner and other unemployment benefits for the unorganised sector employees, subject to availability of resources.
Health, safety and welfare of the workers should be given due importance in the formulation of labour laws.
No of total jobseekers:
The data given by employment exchanges show that as on September 2002, nearly 4.16 crores of people were in the list of job seekers out of which 70% are of class X and above. The number of women job seekers was 1.08 crores.