Labour participation dips as more women withdraw from workforce

The Business Standard has reported leaked findings from the first Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) which was conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) in 2017-18.

The reports give figures for unemployment rate and labour force participation rate from the NSSO report.

These figures when applied on projected population figures can be used to estimate the number of actual jobs in the Indian economy in 2017-18.

An HT analysis using the reported findings from the Businumber ness Standard story and World Bank population projections shows that the total number of workers in India in 2017-18 is 464.01 million.

A comparison of this figure with previous Employment Unemployment Survey (EUS) of the NSSO, which was conducted in 2011-12 shows that the Indian economy lost 17.9 million jobs during these six years.

In terms of annual increase in number of jobs, this is the worst performance since 2004-05.

To be sure, the entire loss in of jobs between 2011-12 and 2017-18 should not be seen as destruction of employment.

This is because the labour force participation rate (LPFR) — part of the population which is either working or looking for jobs — has come down from 39.5% in 2011-12 and 36.9% in 2017-18.

In absolute terms the size of labour force has increased from 492.2 million to 494.2 million during this period.

A large part of the decline in labour force participation rate is because of withdrawal of women from the labour force, as the female labour force participation rate has come down from 22.5% to 17.5%.