Data Shows India’s Employment Slumped Between 2014 and 2016

Employment in the Indian economy shrank by 0.1% in 2015-16 and by 0.2% in 2014-15.

Forget job growth, job creation has been suffering under the Modi Government as the employment shrank by 0.1 percent in financial year 2015-16 and by 0.2 percent in 2014-15, Livemint reported.

According to the findings from the latest KLEMS India database, a research project supported by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) under the umbrella of the World KLEMS initiative, employment has shrunk in several sectors. Among the sectors which witnessed contraction in employment between 2014 and 2016 were agriculture, forestry, fishing’, mining, manufacture of food products, textiles, leather products, paper, transport equipment and trade, the report added.

Strangely, during this time period, India’s gross domestic product witnessed an upswing by 7.4 percent in 2014-15 and 8.2 percent in 2015-16. But growth without direct employment is not new for India. Livemint reported that the compound annual growth rate of employment was a mere 0.53 percent in the 10 years to 2015-16.

The fall in employment in the agricultural sector has been on account of a shift in people moving from low productivity to high productivity jobs. According to Livemint, 70 percent of them found employment in the construction industry between the two years to 2015-16.

But the data indicates that this shift has not been a leveller for all. People shifting to other sectors have not been able to fetch jobs in other sectors due to their “declining productivity”, the report added. The construction industry too has witnessed a decline in factor productivity since 2006-2007.

(With inputs from Livemint )