India is dealing with a serious crisis of employment despite achieving higher than global average rates of GDP growth consistently for many years. The crisis has many dimensions, some of which are low real wage growth, a proliferation of insecure jobs, high rates of unemployment among the educated youth, and low and falling labour force participation rates, particularly among women. Some of these problems are not unique to India. For example, jobless growth, stagnant real wages, and rising insecurity are global phenomena.
In India, in addition to rising unemployment among the higher educated, less educated workers have also seen job losses and reduced work opportunities since 2016. Five million men left the workforce between 2016 and 2018. Although no direct causal relationship can be established based only on these trends, the beginning of the decline in jobs coincided with demonetisation in November 2016.
These are findings by the recently released ‘State of Working India 2019’ which examines employment trends since 2016. Together with ‘State of Working India, 2018’, which analysed the long-run trends in the Indian labour market, the reports reveal a crisis-hit, precarious employment situation.
Source: Free Press Journal
