It is found that the growth has been strong in 2017-18 – around 13 million jobs have been generated. This chapter discusses some of the policies that may have led to this expansion.

• Some of the (seemingly) outsized employment gains in FY 18 might be due to the fact that the previous year employment levels were below normal – two successive drought, and major economic reforms (demonetisation and GST)

Estimates of Employment:

There is a great uncertainty with regard to the status of job creation in the last four years. This uncertainty is caused by the lack of a large scale NSSO (National Sample Survey Office) survey on employment – the last such survey was in 2011-12.  Therefore the discussions are based on private estimates on employment reforms, macro activity etc.  

‘Private’ Estimates of Job Growth:

As of now, three estimates of job growth exist.

1. The first estimate is by a private data company, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), in collaboration with the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), has been publishing monthly All India employment estimated since January 2016 These data point to a 3 million decline in jobs from May 2017 to April 2018
2. The second estimate is contained in a joint paper by Pulak Ghosh (Professor, IIM Bangalore) and Soumya Ghosh (Group Chief Economic Adviser, SBI) In their paper “Towards Payroll Reporting in India”, they estimate the first ever payroll-based estimate of employment change in India. Establishment payrolls contain employee contributions to provident fund or social security payments (EPFO). Their first estimate of job gain was in March 2018 when they estimated that 7 million non-farm sector jobs were created, their latest estimate (July 18, 2018) is that a minimum of 1 Million jobs were created in FY 18
3. The third estimate is provided by Tirtha Das and Surjit bhalla we estimates job growth of 12.8 million in FY18. Our estimates incorporate. EPFO data (for 18-21 year olds), labor force surveys in 2014 and 2015 and CMIE data pertaining to unemployment in 2016 and 2017

Demography In India’s Favour:

• The national fertility rate is now at replacement levels (2.1 children per woman) and the population growth rate has declined to just 1.1 per cent a year, from a 1.8 per cent level two decades earlier.
• The size of the young 15-24 age group is expected to increase by only 2.5 million over the next five years.
• Even with the more expansive definition of the young (15.34 years) the increase is only 11.7 million over the next five years, compared to an increase of almost twice this rate between 202 and 2017
• There has been a rather robust expansion of educational enrolment.
• While labour force participation rates of women in India have declined, the decline is misunderstood. For two reasons. First, about half of the fact that more women are attending school (and college); and second while labour force participation rates for women have declined, male participation rates have also declined, and at about the same rate. The labor force participation rate for women, for ages greater than 24 years, has stabilized since 2009. Increased educational attainment of females should lead to an increase in their labour force participation, and employment in the future.