Why India Needs A Jobs Policy

The country's job crisis is structural and systemic; reliance on high growth and manufacturing has simply not worked.

- By Prasanna Mohanty

OFFICIALLY, India entered into "job-loss" growth period in 2017-18, with the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) revealing a 45-year high unemployment rate of 6.1% and the study of its unit-level data by the Azim Premji University revealing 9 million job losses between 2011-12 and 2017-18 "for the first time in India's history".

Two years later in 201920, the country witnessed structural shifts in jobs. PLFS reports revealed agriculture's share of jobs reversed that year, going up from 42.5% in 2018-19 to 45.6% in 2019-20 and 46.5% in 2020-21. Manufacturing's share, on the other hand, went down from 12.1% to 11.2% and 10.9%, in corresponding years. Jobs also moved away from formal to informal and high productive, high income to low productive, low income and vulnerable ones. The best-quality jobs, "regular wages/salaried", shrank from 22.8% to 21.1% during 2017-18 and 2020-21, while vulnerable "self-employment" went up from 52.2% to 55.6% - with unpaid workers ("helper in household enterprises") within this group going up from 13.6% to 17.3%. Even casual workers fell from 24.9% to 23.3% during the period.

These developments were predictable since India had gone through a long "job-less" growth phase. The 12th Five-Year Plan document made it official in 2013 by saying that 5 million jobs were lost in manufacturing between 2004-05 and 2009-10, although the total number of jobs went up by 2.76 million. But, even as the Centre prepares for Budget 2023, little seems to have changed in terms of policies.

Betting On GDP, Manufacturing

India's policy response has always veered towards high GDP growth and manufacturing, but neither worked.