10 December 2023

India's Jobs: Jul-Sep 2023

The Periodic Labour Force Survey's (PLFS) report for Jul-Sep 2023 was released a few days ago (for cities). If we compare it with the Jul-Sep 2022 report, we can see how India's jobs scenario has performed over the last one year:

# The good news is that the Worker Population Ratio (WPR) has increased, by 1.3% points - from 34.9% to 36.2%.

# The first bad news is in Graph 1 - the % of workers in the 3 sectors (agriculture, industry, services). The % of workers in agriculture has increased - by 0.4% points (from 5.7% to 6.1%). And the % of workers in industry has decreased - by 1% point (from 33.4% to 32.4%). So effectively workers have moved out of industry into agriculture.

# The second bad news is in Graph 2 - the % of workers by type of employment (regular wage/salary, self employed, casual labour). The % of regular wage/salary workers has decreased - by 0.4% points (from 48.7% to 48.3%). And the % of self-employed workers has increased - by 0.7% points (from 39.7% to 40.4%). So effectively workers have moved out of regular wage/salary jobs into self-employment.

It is not enough to simply create jobs. We must create good jobs - ie:
1. Jobs in industry + services (vs agriculture)
2. Regular wage/salary jobs (vs self-employment)

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