-Frontline.in Available evidence indicates that the employment situation in India may have worsened in the recent past, and the losses have been heavy for the informal sector. The delayed release of official data on employment only makes diagnosis difficult. This year’s Union Budget, even if truncated because of its interim nature, was widely anticipated for the manner in which it would address the question of employment. In the last week of January,...

-The Hindu Employment opportunities, formal jobs and the labour force are all shrinking The jobs situation in India does not reflect a crisis, but it is a matter of serious concern. A crisis is understood as an emergency that demands immediate attention, without which we could see a calamity of sorts. There is no immediate calamity of any kind on hand. But there is a deeply insidious problem at work in the...

-The Hindu Business Line The government should explain constant variations in GDP figures. India’s reputation for data credibility could suffer “The (revised GDP) numbers are the result of a hatchet job” tweeted former Finance Minister P Chidambaram after the Modi government published the back-series GDP data late November. Ahmed Patel, his colleague in the Congress party, added his bit: ‘In its desperate attempt to re-write GDP data, the government resembles a student...

-The Hindu India has no industrial policy or employment strategy to ride the wave of its demographic dividend Job creation has slowed since 2011-12, the year of the last published National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) labour force survey. I used Labour Bureau annual survey (2015-16) data and Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy Pvt. Ltd. (CMIE) data (post-2016), which has a sample size larger than the NSSO labour force surveys, to reach this...

-TheWire.in Manufacturing jobs actually fell in absolute terms from 58.9 million in 2011-12 to 48.3 million in 2015-16. Economists have been writing for some months that, contrary to the claims of the government, there is plenty of data available that shows unmistakably that Unemployment is high and rising. Educated Unemployment has worsened just as young people are getting better educated, and expect to work outside agriculture in industry and services. We have done this...