Author: BS Economy Bureau in New
Delhi
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: January 20, 2004
URL: http://us.rediff.com/money/2004/jan/20jobs.htm
The rate of employment generation
in the country has gone up from an average of 1.07 per cent between 1994
and 2000, to 2.04 per cent between 1999-2000 and December 2002. The rise
has been more in the urban areas as compared to the rural ones.
Figures released by the National
Sample Survey Organisation show that on an average 8.4 million jobs have
been added over the 2.5-year period.
The Tenth Five-Year plan aims to
generate 10 million employment opportunities each year.
"The shortfall in employment generation
is because of the lower than expected growth. Delay in certain policy changes
have also hampered employment creation. However, now, that recovery has
started, we are likely to achieve the targeted employment generation figures,"
said SP Gupta, member Planning Commission.
The usual principal status indicates
that the employment situation in the country had improved considerably,
he added.
The additional employment in the
1999-2000 to December 2002 period has come from the small scale sector,
Gupta said, adding that in contrast, the corporate sector had shed around
1 million jobs, in the previous year.
Traditionally labour intensive sectors,
like construction, big projects like dams are highly mechanised, resulting
in a sharp drop in the number of employed.
There is, therefore, a need to focus
on the small-scale sector and on demand driven vocational training, he
added. There are a minimum of 8.4 million class 10 drop-outs in the country
each year and the formal educational system can absorb less than half of
them, underlining the need for vocational education.
Also, current statistics show that
abbot 70 to 75 per cent of students coming out of vocational training institutes
do not get placements. This is an indication of the lack of market focus
in the training.
The figures on employment growth
are however based on the UPS, which only measures open unemployment in
the economy.
"This type of unemployment is limited
to urban areas, and is not correlated with poverty," say economists.
These figures are not strictly comparable
with the plan figures and even with the 1999-2000 figures, which are based
on the current daily status of unemployment, which measures both unemployment
and underemployment.
Given the seasonal nature of employment
in agriculture, underemployment is a big problem in the country and is
also highly correlated with levels of poverty.
The NSSO, which churned out CDS
employment figures every five years, has been asked to conduct 6 monthly
surveys on CDS employment to help monitor the employment situation in the
country.
The first of these bi-annual surveys
would be out in May 2004.
