Now, jobs grow faster than population in India
11 Aug 2007, 0113 hrs IST,Subodh Varma,TNN

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Now_jobs_grow_faster_than_population_in_India/articleshow/2272952.cms

NEW DELHI: Employment in India is going through dramatic changes defying conventional wisdom and turning many common perceptions on their heads. For the first time since Independence, employment has grown at a faster rate than population during a five-year period between 2000 and 2005. This is a clear reversal of the jobless growth witnessed in the '90s.

Despite the growth in jobs, unemployment has also grown. An increasing number of women and elderly are now joining the workforce, while the earlier trend of child labour decreasing has slowed down. In fact, among urban male children, there is a slight increase in the proportion of those working compared to 1999-2000. Casual labour is also down and self-employment is up. And the industrial sector is generating more jobs than the services sector.

These apparently paradoxical conclusions emerge from the National Sample Survey Organisation's 61st round survey report on employment and unemployment. It was carried out during 2004-2005, covering a sample of over 6 lakh people spread over rural and urban areas. The results have ignited a debate among economists on what the implications are, though the veracity of the findings remains largely unquestioned.

According to the report, the workforce participation rate, that is the number of persons working as a percentage of the total population, has increased by 2.85% a year between 2000 and 2005, which is well beyond the current population growth rate. This increase has been more significant in urban areas, and among males. However, the report reveals that the unemployment rate has also gone up, especially among females in both rural and urban areas.

How can employment and unemployment both be going up? This happens because unemployment does not mean somebody who is not working, but only those who are seeking work but not getting it. Thus, unemployment can go up even as employment does if more and more people who were earlier quite content to not work start seeking employment. This includes housewives, children, the elderly and the ailing.

In short, more people from among those who earlier did not seek work are now in the job market. Some of them find jobs, some don't, pushing up the numbers in both the 'employed' and 'unemployed' categories. Some experts argue that this is happening because families are opting for more and more members entering the job market in order to boost family incomes.

There could also be a trend of women and the elderly, who constitute the reserve labour force of the family, taking up farming jobs while their menfolk look for non-farm jobs which provide less uncertain and perhaps even higher incomes.

The NSSO report also indicates that the number of households with at least one male and one female member working has increased in this period, compared to the previous five years. In fact, this trend is visible more sharply in higher income or asset-owning sections of the society.

Contrary to popular perception, casual work is declining, while both regular work and self-employment is increasing. The decline in casual work has been most significant in urban areas—from 16.8% to 14.6% for men and from 21.4% to 16.7% for women. This has been compensated by an increase in self-employment and, in the case of women, even by regular employment.

Why is self-employment more prevalent than wage employment? One of the reasons could be that wage employment is not paying enough. A comparison of the direction in which real wages (that is, wages adjusted to take account of inflation) moved between two periods—from 1993-94 to 1999-2000 and from 1999-2000 to 2004-05—shows that there has been a slowing down of the wage increase for both casual and regular work. In fact, only graduate regular workers have experienced a marginal increase, while for all other educational categories, real wages have actually declined.
Again contrary to popular hype, it is not the services sector that is generating more employment, but the industrial sector. In fact, in the urban areas, employment growth in services has actually declined—from 60.6% to 59.5% for males and from 52.9% to 49.5% for females. The established trend of declining employment in agriculture continues.

The same report says " Despite the growth in jobs, unemployment has also grown"
Then, the net result is same as before?

Also, in TOI or Hindustan Times, a day earlier to this report there was another report. It was about - Every third person in India lives on Rs. 20 a day/ 600 a month. So, it's hard to comrehend what the paper wants to say. Different agencies, different statistics, and different results. Despite of a so-called boom, infrastructure in India is still crumbling.

Now, this topic is done to death <sigh>.