India added 2,00,000 formal sector jobs in Sept quarter: Survey

MUMBAI: India added 200,000 formal-sector jobs in the three months ended September 30, 2021, according to a report on the government’s quarterly employment survey (QES) released by Union labour minister Bhupender Yadav on Monday, reflecting the economic recovery in a period when GDP grew by 8.4%.

Total employment in nine sectors of the economy rose to 30.10 million in the July-september 2021 quarter, a net addition of 200,000 jobs from the 30.08 million in April-june 2021, the report showed.

The expansion in employment came during a period of flattening Covid infections and a pick-up in economic activity. A renewed surge in coronavirus infections driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant threatens to hurt jobs growth again. The nine sectors covered by the survey are manufacturing, construction, trade, transport, education, health, accommodation and restaurants, IT/ business process outsourcing and financial services. These sectors make up a majority of the total employment in nonfarm establishments.

The survey covered firms employing 10 persons or more. This is the second report in the series. A total of 12,036 firms were covered.

The report revealed that nearly 90% of the firms surveyed had less than 100 workers, while 30% of the IT/BPO establishments had at least 100 workers.

“The overall percentage of female workers stood at 32.1%, higher than 29.3% reported during the first round of QES,” the report said.

Regular workers constituted 87% of the estimated workforce in the nine sectors, with 2% casual workers. “However, in the construction sector, 20% of the workers were contractual and 6.4% were casual workers,” the report said.

The survey also showed that 5.6% of the total establishments surveyed had total vacancies -nearly 400,000 formal jobs.

Of the total jobs, 39% were in manufacturing, 22% in education and 10% each in health and IT/BPO. On January 3, data from the widely cited Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), a private data firm, showed India’s unemployment rate reached a four-month high of 7.91% in December 2021 compared to 7% and 7.7% in November and October 2021. The unemployment rate hit its highest rate since 8.3% in August 2021, the latest CMIE data showed.

The government’s newly launched quarterly establishment survey (QES) is meant to plug a critical gap in short-term official employment data. Prior to QES, India lacked an official periodic, high-frequency jobs survey. The survey was launched in its present form from the April-june 2021 quarter.

The All-india Quarterly Establishment-based Employment Survey or AQEES is meant to fill this critical gap.