Off-farm jobs growing faster than workforce (India)

Between 1998 and �05, jobs in the country�s enterprises other than those engaged in crop production and plantations, rose by 2.5% a year whereas the growth of the workforce is 2% a year.

The growth in employment is an improvement over the Fourth Census rate of 1.7% a year during 1990-98, pointed out GK Vasan, minister of state for statistics and programme implementation. This shows an accelerating trend in job growth in the latter half of the reform years, as compared to the initial years.

The Economic Census, carried out by the Central Statistical Organisation, is a complete count of all entrepreneurial units in the geographical boundaries of the country, and is more reliable than any sampling exercise. The first such exercise was undertaken in 1977.

The critics of reform still have something to cheer about. Data released by the government on Monday show that despite all efforts, crop production and the plantation sector still employs 73% of the total labour force of the country of 375m. A shade under 100m workers are employed in industrial and services sector of the economy.

But the bad news is that the urban sector has been lagging behind the rural areas in job creation. 51% of total employment in non-agricultural jobs are in rural areas and 49% in urban. And rural India has created 61.3 % industrial and service sector units, with urban India accounting for only 38.7% between 1998 and �04.

Since such units tend to employ less than 10 workers, hired workers constitute only 52% of the total non-agro workforce in the country.

Surprisingly the results of the provisional fifth Economic Census also shows that rural women have a better working profile than their urban sisters. 86 % of the urban women are confined to the role of home makers, compared with 76% of their sisters in rural areas.

The results show that annual growth rate of total employment for the non-agricultural sector has risen to 2.5% between 1998 and December �04. This is higher than the annual addition to the labour force at 2 %.

The Economic Census makes a complete count of all entreprenurial units in the country. It ranges from big companies to the cobbler on the street or the village bullock cart wheelmaker.

Overall, contrary to popular perception, employment rates for the non-agro sector has actually grown faster in rural areas than in urban areas. This means despite the faster growth in the number of enterprises in the economy at 4.80 % annually since 1998, against 2.36% in the last census, employment growth is yet to take off.

According to the Economic Census, there are now 42.12m enterprises in the country. Of these those employing more than 10 workers is just over half a million, making up about 1.4% of the total number of enterprises.

But surprisingly the percentage of women employed as non-agricultural workers is only 19 % of the total work force of about 100m in the country. They account for 24.3 % of the rural non-agro workforce and 14 % of the urban non-agro workforce.