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Unemployment crisis- a burning issue

Young Bites. Dated: 3/22/2018 11:52:35 AM

If the word demands a definition, “unemployment”, may be elaborated as a state of not finding work by an individual who is fit and willing to work. Labour force is the term collectively applied to the total number of individuals within the population who are willing and capable of doing work. Unemployment rate of a country is indicative of its socio-economic health. Unemployment casts some short term ripples throughout the economy by reducing an individual’s contribution in terms of services and taxes. The unemployed also does not possess the power of purchase, thus in effect contributing to bringing down demand of goods in the market and creating more unemployment. This vicious cycle creates a cascading effect throughout the economy and trickles down to different social strata.
Providing enough employment opportunities in India with a population of 1.34 billion is not easy. And the fact that half of the population is below the age of 25 and will soon enter the job market will only make matters worse.
In response, the government has come up with initiatives such as ‘Make in India’, ‘Skill India’ and ‘Start-up India’ to promote employment. But the 2015–16 Annual Employment and Unemployment Survey found that the labour force participation rate (LFPR) nationally was only 50.3 per cent. And the LFPR is much lower for females than for males. The survey shows sluggish employment growth and the growth varied across sectors. While sectors such as IT have seen growth, other sectors such as jewellery, automobile manufacturing and transport have seen a decline in employment in recent years.
In India, agriculture accounts for 46 per cent of the workforce, compared to 22 per cent in manufacturing and 32 per cent in services. Despite various policy initiatives, the manufacturing sector has not been able to create mass employment, unlike in countries such as China. Further, casual and contractual employment is replacing permanent jobs in the manufacturing sector.
In 2016, India’s unemployment rate was 7.97 per cent, with rural unemployment at 7.15 per cent and urban unemployment at 9.62 per cent. In rural areas, unemployment figures are lower due to the ‘Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act’ (MGNREGA). This act aims to guarantee the ‘right to work’ by providing at least 100 days of paid employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. In the Union Budget 2017–18, the MGNREGA received Rs 480 billion (US$7.5 billion). While the act has helped to lower the unemployment rates, it has not been able to tackle disguised unemployment/underemployment. As such programs focus only on unskilled employment.
To connect job seekers to potential employers, the Ministry of Labour and Employment launched the National Career Service portal. The portal is a common platform connecting job-seekers, employers, skill providers, placement organisations and counsellors. In the same month as the National Career Service was launched, Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana — a skill development scheme — was launched by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship to help young people learn industry-relevant skills and enable them to secure skilled employment.
While these schemes may increase employability through skill upgrading, one of India’s largest employers of educated youth — the IT sector — has begun laying off employees. Companies like Wipro, Cognizant and Infosys have announced that they will downsize. While there was 8.6 per cent growth in the IT sector in the 2016–17 financial year, jobs only grew by 5 per cent, compared with 6 per cent in 2015–2016. This downward trend is predicted to continue, with a 20–25 per cent reduction in growth in employment in the IT sector over the next three years.
Industry experts blame this on automation, artificial intelligence and stricter visa norms in key markets such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Some companies have announced that they will focus on new technologies such as artificial intelligence, rather than concentrating on low-skilled IT jobs.
But this technological advancement need not impact job creation. India can instead move towards a knowledge-based economy by focusing on high-value manufacturing and enrolment in quality higher education.
Disparity in access to higher education leads to unemployment among the youth. Countries such as South Korea have successfully developed the higher education sector through private participation, while the Singaporean government has launched a program to establish partnerships between domestic and foreign universities to promote tertiary education. India could learn from these examples.
Moreover, India needs to change its anarchic labour laws which lead to creation of contractual jobs instead of permanent employment. Retail is a labour-intensive sector, and foreign investment in retail would create jobs in the both retail and related sectors like apparel manufacturing and logistics. Similarly, allowing foreign investment in sectors like legal and accountancy services will create employment as more foreign firms move to India. Infrastructure investment can also be utilised as an engine of job creation.
Finally, India needs to sign trade agreements conceding to its partners’ requests to open sectors like insurance, legal services and retail, and in return, bargain for easier work visa norms.
With these smarter policies, India can move towards permanent positions in high-value sectors, and need not fear technological advancement or unemployment.
The unemployment crisis in India has been purportedly worsening as new job creation trickled to an eight-year low in 2016. But while pushing private companies to invest in job creating industries, the government seems to have forgotten its share of the task at hand.
There are about 412,752 vacant posts as of March 2016 in various government departments, the Indian parliament was told on Feb. 07. That’s 11% of the around 3.6 million workforce of the various central government departments.
Santosh Kumar Gangwar, junior minister for labour and employment said that directions have been issued to fill up these posts, though he didn’t specify a deadline.
At a time when there are an estimated 17 million people entering the workforce every year, and only about 5.5 million jobs being created, one would expect filling up existing vacancies to be the government’s priority. Recruitment to such posts is done via agencies such as the union public service commission and the staff selection commission. Meanwhile, there were 44.9 million job-seekers registered with India’s employment exchanges up to September 2015.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has predicted a worsening of the situation. The number of jobless people in India will increase to 18.6 million in 2018 and 18.9 million in 2019, compared to 18.3 million in 2017.This is vastly different from Modi’s promise of 10 million new jobs if he was elected prime minister in 2014.
Now, even the government is beginning to see the enormity of the problem. In the economic survey released last month, chief economic advisor Arvind Subramaniam advocated labour reforms, increased spending on infrastructure, and creating a conducive environment to boost job creation.