‘Job growth sinks to abyss with rise in low-income employment’

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No job growth seen during 2012-19, says Jairam Ramesh

By Raisina Correspondent

New Delhi, September 17: The Indian economy continues to stay on jobless growth path. Former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh quoted report of the ILO to state that India witnessed slump in employment in organised sector.

The job growth between 2012-19 was almost negligible at 0.01 per cent, said Ramesh. He quoted from the report of the ILO to state that the unemployment rate among youth in urban areas was 17.2 per cent, 10.6 per cent among the rural youth, and 21.6 per cent for the women in the urban areas.

The employment in the formal sector during 2019-22 was down from 10.5 per cent to 9.7 per cent, said Ramesh quoting the ILO report. He added that there has been a corresponding rise in employment in non-formal sector which lacks social security.

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“The share of the regular income jobs is down from pre-Covid 24 per cent to 21 per cent. The K-shaped recovery post-pandemic benefited the billionaires while pathways for the middle class have been shut down,” said Ramesh, who is also a Rajya Sabha MP and the chief of the communication department of the Congress.

He said that the worrisome signs of the state of the employment could also be gauged from rise in the labour participation in agriculture. “The farm labour participation has jumped from 42 per cent to 45 per cent. This is contrary to the claims of the modernisation of the economy,” added Ramesh.

The Congress leader questioned the data of the Reserve Bank of India which recently claimed addition of 80 millions jobs in the economy. “The non-salaried household jobs by women were added in the RBI data. This is erroneous,” asserted Ramesh in his statement on Tuesday.

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He also said that the RBI report only reveals a rise in low-income informal jobs at the cost of the regular jobs with high income.

Ramesh attributed adverse impact of demonetisation on the small and medium enterprises as one of the reasons for the “jobless growth of the Indian economy”. “The haphazard rollout of the GST and rising imports from China have also adversely affected employment in India,” added Ramesh.

Deepening job crisis in the country was apparently acknowledged by the Union Budget this year also. Union Minister for Finance Nirmala Sitharaman sought to bank on industries with internship and job subsidy schemes to find employment.