Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 150
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 151
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
LATEST NEWS UPDATES | The paradox of job growth -R Nagaraj

The paradox of job growth -R Nagaraj

Share this article Share this article
published Published on Jul 5, 2018   modified Modified on Jul 5, 2018
-The Hindu

Besides the missing informal sector, over-estimation of output growth also offers clues

Are the latest employment estimates by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) factually correct? No. They are off the mark, and confined to the economy’s organised or formal sector, accounting at best for 15% of the workforce. Is there a paradox in high output growth rates and the marginal effect on employment? Probably not, if one acknowledges that GDP estimates (after the latest revision a few years ago) have apparently overstated domestic output growth on account of the infirmities in the methods applied and datasets used.

Between September 2017 and April 2018, says a CSO media release last week titled “Payroll Reporting in India: An Employment Perspective – April 2018”, the economy added 4.1 million new jobs in the formal sector. Apparently, these estimates supplement the data on organised sector employment that are reported regularly in the Economic Survey since the early 1960s, compiled by the Directorate General of Employment, Ministry of Labour and Employment.

The CSO release defines jobs as ones that provide at least one government financed (or mandated) social security benefit such as Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF), National Pension Scheme, or Employees’ State Insurance Scheme. NITI Aayog and official economists have also put out similar estimates since early this year, inviting widespread scepticism among knowledgeable people. As the formal sector accounts for just about 8-15% of India’s workforce (depending on the definitions used), the official estimates are completely silent about the majority of the workforce engaged in the informal sector.

Lack of credibility

Ignoring the tiny size of the formal sector for the moment, how reliable or credible are the official estimates? Very little and for two reasons: the estimates are based on administrative records of implementing the social security schemes, whose completeness, consistency and accuracy are unknown; and since a formal (organised) sector worker, in principle, can legitimately access (or subscribe to) more than one social security scheme, double counting is a distinct possibility. The release does not explain how the problem is addressed in the database. Therefore, rightly, experts have demanded the release of the administrative data for independent verification.

Moreover, the official data suffer from a conceptual problem. The social security databases, by design, are lists of workers enrolled in the schemes, as an entitlement or as voluntary subscribers — not employment registers. These schemes are applicable to establishments above a certain size (of employment), and to certain kinds of enterprises. For instance, in the factory sector, those employing 20 or more workers are mandated to provide EPF to all the workers (with a matching contribution by the employer). So, if in a factory, employment goes up from 19 to 20 workers, it comes under the purview of the EPF, to be provided to all the 20 workers. Thus, the EPF enrolment increases by 20 workers, but the additional job created is just for one worker. Herein lies the fault.

Historically, evasion of EPF by employers is widespread, given poor enforcement of labour laws. The present government, in its efforts to formalise employment, has incentivised employers to enrol workers under EPF by offering to make employers’ contribution to the social security scheme for three years, thus boosting enrolment. Maharashtra, for instance, as an additional labour welfare measure, has widened the ambit of EPF to include all power-loom workers (irrespective of the size of the enterprise), boosting formal sector employment. Such measures, however temporary, may enlarge the formal sector size but cannot be counted as new jobs created. Hence, the official measure is flawed.

A comparison

The formal sector stands at the apex of India’s labour market pyramid, agriculture being at the bottom, employing 50% of the workforce. The remaining workers are in the non-farm informal sector, spread across rural and urban areas. In fact, it is this sector that has grown in recent decades at the expense of the other two sectors mentioned above. Moreover, nearly half of the informal labour workers are self-employed in household (or own account) enterprises, often engaging unpaid family labour. Varying degrees of under-employment or disguised unemployment are the defining feature of informal labour markets.

Please click here to read more.

The Hindu, 5 July, 2018, https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-paradox-of-job-growth/article24333417.ece?homepage=true


Related Articles

 

Write Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

Video Archives

Archives

share on Facebook
Twitter
RSS
Feedback
Read Later

Contact Form

Please enter security code
      Close