Search for Employment Continues: Job Growth stays at 1% despite GDP growing at 7%

Jobs in the Indian market have been hard to come by and the market has constantly been under the scanner for the lack of employment despite good GDP growth.

Employment generation has not lived up to the mark with the GDP expansion, and the same has been confirmed by the domestic rating agency Care Ratings, terming it as a major concern.

The agency noted that proactive measures and the efforts to improve the infrastructure from the government will help improve the scenario. It can be noted that the union labour ministry had also conceded and set up a task force to work on the same.

Bandaru Dattatreya, Labour Minister had said in May, “The current growth is a jobless growth. Many European and Asian countries, including India, are facing it. Growth is being reported but it is not reflecting in employment generation.”

According to the agency, services sector has shown a slight improvement but manufacturing has let down and failed to create substantial jobs in the recent past. Banking, IT, retail and healthcare have created the maximum number of jobs, while mining, power and telecom have seen reduction in the employees.

CARE studied about employment in the corporate sector for last five years and asked for the findings to be taken with caution because the unorganized sector and smaller businesses account for a large share in employment generation.

The agency said these numbers are broadly indicative of the trends witnessed in the last two years. The overall number of employees in the 1,473 companies surveyed grew to 5.18 million in FY-17 from 5.01 million in FY-15, showing a minimal growth of around 1 percent per year when compared to nearly 7 percent economic growth.

Banking has been the best employment sector with an employment share of 21.3 percent, followed by IT, mining, healthcare and textiles. Fast-moving consumer goods, media and entertainment and paper recorded a fall in employment in FY17 from the previous fiscal.

After showing negative growth in FY-16, crude oil, infrastructure, trading, automobiles and ancillaries, finance and hospitality showed some improvement in FY17. Considering the cost of employment, the average salary of employees has risen to Rs 8.35 lakh in FY17 from Rs 7.13 lakh in FY15.