Economic Growth and Employment Trends in India, 1983-2010: What Does the Latest Employment Data Reveal?

Abstract

This paper is principally focused on the output and employment trends in India during the period 1983-2010 with a focus on the latest employment figure from NSS 2009-10. The results indicate that despite a high output growth, there has been a deceleration of employment growth during1the post-reform period. Such a deceleration of employment growth occurred due of a massive fall in employment growth (0.02 per cent) during the medium-term phase, that is, 2004-05 to 2009-10. We have also seen that the agriculture and manufacturing sectors made negative contributions to the increase in employment, whereas construction played a dominant role in 20D9-10. In terms of the quality of employment, there has been a declining share ofS£, wherein the number of casual labourers had increased significantly, followed by a small proportion of increase in regular wage salaried workers. It has also been found that the norganised sector employment trend has shown a declining trend, whereas the organised private sector shows a significant job creation in 2009-10. We also observe that the increase in productivity is well associated with a greater factor substitution of capital for labour. In the light of these results, it appears that jobless growth has now become a serious problem for the Indian economy despite the continuous efforts that have been made to fulfil the employment-led growth objectives.