According to a survey by Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), which covered 175,000 households, which is about 700,000 people, 405 million people have found employment in May-August, 2019. This means, 2.5 million additional jobs were created as compared to the same time period in 2018.
While some increase in jobs has been witnessed in the services sector, jobs seem to have been lost in the information technology (IT) and financial sectors.
Clearly, half the population of the country is employed, but most of them are doing informal jobs, in the agriculture and small-scale sectors. Only a very small fraction of the population is employed in the government sector, in private jobs or in the IT space.
About ten million jobs had been lost last year. Almost a million jobs were lost in the manufacturing sector. Jobs in the IT and financial sectors also dipped and 2.2 million jobs were lost in construction. Considering that construction is the first sector that agricultural labourers migrate to, when there is a contraction in this space, workers are forced to return to the farms.
With the retail segment failing to absorb as many people as it used to earlier, the services sector is also facing issues. This is because, the retail trade segment is otherwise responsible for the maximum jobs. While jobs are on the rise there, the rate of increase has reduced substantially.
The concern is that more people are returning to work in the farmlands instead of getting into better jobs.
