India employment provisionally grew at 6% in FY24 vs 3.2% in FY23, shows RBI data

People walk on Kartavya Path, earlier known as Rajpath

India provisionally created 46.7 million jobs in the financial year ended March 2024, taking the country's total employment to 643.3 million, a Reserve Bank of India report showed on Monday.

The country's employment growth rate stood at 6% in that fiscal year, versus 3.2% in the previous fiscal year, the RBI's report on measuring industry level productivity and employment showed.

The report, a routine release from the central bank, has traditionally only shown historical numbers. On Monday, however, the central bank said it is attempting a provisional estimate of productivity for the total economy for the first time for the financial year 2023/24 based on available information.

The release of the data follows a Citibank report last week which said growth of close to 7% will only create 8 million to 9 million jobs in India, short of the 11 million to 12 million needed.

"Even 7% GDP growth might not be able to fulfil the job requirement over the next decade," Citi's chief India economist Samiran Chakraborty wrote in the note.

In a separate statement, the federal labour department too countered Citi's report to say its estimates suggest an average of over 20 million employment opportunities per year were created between 2017-18 to 2021-22.