India's Employment Landscape: Insights from the Economic Survey 2023-24

Economic Survey 2023-24: Where does India stand on the employment, and what's next? | Business Insider India

The , which was tabled earlier today by Finance Minister estimated that in 2022-23, India's total workforce stood at nearly 56.5 crore. However, as data from the recent Periodic Labor Force Survey (PLFS) notes, their distribution is highly skewed, with over 45% of them engaged in agriculture, followed by 28.9% in services, 13% in construction, and 11.4% in manufacturing. At the same time, while the agriculture sector has grown at about 4.18% at constant prices over the last 5 years, India's service sector is estimated to have grown by around 7.6% in just the last financial year, as provisional estimates suggest. As such, the continued dominance of the agriculture sector as an employer, particularly when it comes to women, is concerning, especially as India's service sector, which contributes about 55% to the total size of economy, demands increasingly more workers, who possess specific, focused skill sets (think blockchain, AI, machine learning, 3D printing, web development and more). The unemployment rate amongst youth, or those aged between 15-29 has come down sharply to 10% in 2022-23, from 17.8% in 2017-18. Nearly 75% of all new subscribers on EPFO payroll, a gauge for formal employment generation, are aged between 18 and 28. But while our economy keeps pace with employing young population, a staggering 57.3% of this workforce is self-employed, while another 18.3% work as unpaid laborers in households. The most prominent participant in both these categories happen to be women. As for regular wage or salaried workers, they constitute merely 20.9% of the workforce. Casual labor, characterized by sporadic, intermittent terms of employment, makes up for 21.8% of the workforce. Its not as if female labor workforce participation (FLFPR) is dwindling. In fact, as the survey notes, it has been rising for the last 6 years, with rural FLFPR inching up by 16.9 percentage points between 2017-18 and 2022-23. But the same rise is not to be seen in urban FLFPR, which inched up a meagre 5% to 25.4% in 2022-23. Pan-India, women participation in workforce jumped to 37%, largely driven by the thrust in rural FLFPR. The growth in terms of wages per worker in rural areas between FY15-22 was also higher in rural areas at 6.9%, as compared to 6.1% in urban areas. So, what can be done to rationalize this lopsidedness in employment? In order to cater to the requirements of the growing workforce, the survey estimated that India will have to annually generate around 78.5 lakh non-farm jobs annually till 2030. And with India's care needs set to grow significantly in the next 25 years, it is time to develop India's care economy. Consider this-by 2050, the population of those aged between 0-14 years will decline to 18%, or 30 crore people, while those aged above 60 will swell to 20.8%, or a massive 34.7 crore person. Both these segments will need considerable care, which is currently an unpaid job both employed and unemployed women already undertake. Per NSO's time use statistics for 2019, working-age women in India spend 5.6 hours per day on unpaid work, as opposed to just 30 mins for men. Even employed women end up spending 6x more time on unpaid care, compared to their male counterparts. As it is, studies notes that an additional hour of caregiving per day reduces women's labor market participation by 20 percentage points, while having no effect on men. A recent report by CII pegged the economic value of women's unpaid domestic and care work to be a staggering 15-17% of GDP. As it is, care economy is one of the fastest growing sectors, expected to generate around 475 million jobs globally. In India, an investment of just 2% of GDP could lead to 11 million new jobs, 70% of which will go to women, accelerating their participation in labor force, the survey revealed. As such, developing India's care economy, both for catering to its young and silver dividend, will become a cornerstone for employment related policies in the times to come.

Economic Survey Reveals Skill Gap Crisis; 1 in 2 Indian Graduates Unfit for Employment - News18

Economic Survey 2024: Sixty-five per cent of India's fast-growing population is under 35, and many lack the skills needed by a modern economy. Estimates show that about 51.25 per cent of the youth is deemed employable, according to Economic Survey 2024. In other words, about one in two are not yet readily employable, straight out of college. However, it must be noted that the percentage has improved from around 34 per cent to 51.3 per cent in the last decade, it added. Economic Survey 2024 Live Updates Employment and Skill Development: Towards Quality Indian labour market indicators have improved in the last six years, with the unemployment rate declining to 3.2 per cent in 2022-23. Rising youth and female participation in the workforce presents an opportunity to tap the demographic and gender dividend. The net payroll additions under EPFO have more than doubled in the past five years, signalling healthy growth in formal employment. With artificial intelligence taking root in several spheres of economic activity, steering technological choices towards collective welfare is key. Employers owe it to themselves to strike a balance between deploying technology and labour. To generate and sustain quality employment, agro-processing and care economy are two promising candidates. The Government has implemented measures to boost employment, foster self-employment, and promote worker welfare. The rise in the number of candidates undergoing skill development through the Government's flagship programmes has underlined the thrust to 'Skill India'. Many regulatory chokeholds, such as those related to land use, building codes, restricting sectors and hours open to women's employment, hold back employment generation. Releasing them is guaranteed to boost employment and raise women's labour force participation rate. The survey also pointed out the 2022-23 Annual Report of the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE), which highlights that "as per NSSO, 2011-12 (68th round) report on Status of Education and Vocational Training in India, among persons of age 15-59 years, about 2.2 per cent reported to have received formal vocational training and 8.6 per cent reported to have received non-formal vocational training". The Annual Report further enumerates the challenges in the skilling and entrepreneurship landscape in the country, such as (i) Public perception that views skilling as the last option meant for those who have not been able to progress/have opted out of the formal academic system. (ii) Skill development programmes of the Central Government are spread across more than 20 Ministries/Departments without any robust coordination and monitoring mechanism to ensure convergence. (iii) Multiplicity in assessment and certification systems that leads to inconsistent outcomes and causes confusion among the employers. (iv) Paucity of trainers, inability to attract practitioners from industry as faculty. (v) Mismatch between demand and supply at the sectoral and spatial levels. (vi) Limited mobility between skill and higher education programmes and vocational education. (vii) Very low coverage of apprenticeship programmes (viii) Narrow and often obsolete skill curricula. (ix) Declining labour force participation rate of women. (x) Pre-dominant non-farm, unorganised sector employment with low productivity but no premium for skilling. (xi) Non- inclusion of entrepreneurship in the formal education system. (xii) Lack of mentorship and adequate access to finance for start-ups. (xiii) Inadequate impetus to innovation driven entrepreneurship. (xiv) Lack of assured wage premium for skilled people