Four lakh jobs created in December quarter by nine key sectors: Govt

Representational Image. A worker cuts metal inside a workshop manufacturing metal pipes in Mumbai.

Nine key sectors including trade, manufacturing and IT created 400,000 jobs during October-December 2021, the government said on Thursday in its quarterly employment survey (QES).

“The estimated total employment in the nine select sectors came in at 3.14 crore which is 4 lakh higher than the estimate for September 2021 quarter,” the labour and employment ministry said.

When QES was revived and the first report was published for Q1 of FY22, the number of people employed in these nine sectors were 3.08 crore.

Other than trade, manufacturing, and IT/BPO, other sectors considered were financial services, education, health, construction, transport and accommodation and restaurant.

Of the total employment estimated in the selected nine sectors, manufacturing accounted for nearly 39 percent, followed by education 22 percent, IT/BPOs 11 percent, and health 10 percent. Trade and transport made up 5.3 percent and 4.2 percent of the total estimated workers respectively.

To be sure, the high manufacturing job creation numbers must be seen against the fact that around 40 percent of the total survey companies were from the sector alone. Overall, data was captured from more than 10,800 companies.

For record, jobs have been a prickly issue in India as employment generation numbers have been lagging behind the overall new addition in India's labour market. While the white collar employment ecosystem is seeing demand for talent, the larger labour market in India is still stressed.

Employees and employers demography

Data analysis showed that regular workers made up 85 percent of the estimated workforce in the nine selected sectors and rest were contractual and casual workers.

In construction, 21 percent of the workers were contractual and 6.2 percent were casual workers.

Most establishments (97.9 percent) were located outside households, although 5.5 percent of units in accommodation and restaurants sector were found to operate from within households.

Data also showed that 25.4 percent of all establishments were registered under the Companies Act. This was as high as 84 percent in IT/BPOs, 53.1 percent in construction, 42.5 percent in manufacturing, 40.9 percent in the transport, 34.4 percent in trade and 30.2 percent in financial services.

Of the total firms surveyed, 58.6 percent were registered under the Goods and Service Tax Act.