News Brief
All-India Quarterly Establishment-Based Employment Survey Shows Jobs Increased By 30 Per Cent Since 2013-14
- The government is carrying out different surveys covering the unorganised sectors and will come out with a "national employment policy" soon.
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Labour and Employment Minister Bhupender Yadav, on Monday (27 September) released a report on All-India Quarterly Establishment-based Employment Survey. The survey covered more than 10,000 firms in nine sectors that employed more than 10 workers. These nine sectors account for 85 per cent of the total employment in such establishments.
Manufacturing was found to account for 41 per cent of the surveyed establishments, followed by education (22 per cent) and health (8 per cent).
Here are the highlights of the report.
Employment increased by 29 per cent from the base year of 2013-14. Overall, employment stood at 3.08 crore in the first quarter of the current fiscal year (April-June 2021), up from 2.37 crore as reported in the Sixth Economic Census (2013-2014).
All the sectors except trade and accommodation and restaurants saw an increase in employment over the period. There was a decline in employment in trade (-25 per cent) and accommodation and restaurants (-13 per cent), which can be attributed to the COVID second wave.
The most impressive growth was recorded by the IT/BPO sector at 152 per cent, followed by health at 77 per cent, transport at 68 per cent, financial services at 48 per cent, construction at 42 per cent, education at 39 per cent and manufacturing at 22 per cent.
The first quarter of this fiscal year also saw 27 per cent of the surveyed establishments retrenching workers due to the pandemic. However, 81 per cent of the workers received their full wages during the first lockdown from 25 March to 30 June 2020.
Evidence-based policy making
“Evidence-based policy making and statistics-based execution is the major focus of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi,” Labour and Employment Minister Bhupender Yadav was quoted as saying by The Hindu.
He added that All-India Quarterly Establishment-based Employment Survey as well as others covering unorganised sectors being conducted by the Labour Survey would help in policy-making.
The Labour Bureau, with the expert group for all-India surveys under Professor S P Mukherjee, is reportedly also carrying out surveys on migrant workers and domestic workers.
These surveys would be significant in policy-making in general and in framing a “national employment policy” that the government is planning to launch soon.
Labour and Employment secretary Sunil Barthwal had earlier said that having contemporary data was useful for policy-makers and this survey would help not just the labour ministry but also other government departments and ministries. Using the survey, the public could focus on learning skills that are found lacking in the workforce, he added.
He said when the government was coming up with COVID-19-related welfare schemes, like the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana, the only data available was from the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation and the Employees State Insurance Corporation, or “administrative data”. “Soon, field surveys will start for the unorganised sector as well,” he informed.
