BackJob creation slumps in March quarter
Employers in India added 36,000 fewer jobs in the March quarter than in the preceding three months
Premium
New Delhi: Indian manufacturing and export-oriented companies added the fewest jobs in a year during the quarter ended 31 March, according to data released on Monday, illustrating the depth of the downturn in Asia’s third largest economy at that point of time.
Employers in India added 36,000 fewer jobs in the March quarter than in the preceding three months, according to the quarterly jobs data compiled by the labour bureau of the labour and employment ministry.
This is the worst employment generation at least since the April-June quarter of 2013. In fact, the number of direct or regular workers declined by 60,000 in the March quarter, but employers added 24,000 temporary jobs.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA) came to power in the April-May general election with a promise to revive economic growth that slumped to below 5% in each of the previous two financial years and boost employment generation.
Growth bounced back to 5.7% in the quarter ended 30 June, the fastest pace in two-and-a-half years, sparking hope that a recovery is under way.
The new government is focusing on manufacturing and infrastructure to create jobs and has announced long-pending labour reforms to boost employment.
The bleak employment data may potentially provide ammunition to trade unions to pressure the Union government against changing the decades-old labour laws to make them more business friendly. Trade unions say changing the laws will allow employers to fire workers at will.
The changes by the government will add to casualization of the workforce and harm employees, said D.L. Sachdeva, national secretary of the All India Trade Union Congress. “The government has to think of the employees welfare and safeguard their rights than helping rich industrialists," Sachdeva said.
The labour bureau has been conducting quarterly jobs survey since October-December 2008. Data was collected from companies belonging to eight manufacturing and exports sectors, including textiles, leather, automobiles, metals, gems and jewellery, transport, information technology and business process outsourcing (IT/BPO) and handloom/powerloom.
The textiles sector was the worst performer in the March quarter, adding 56,000 fewer jobs than the preceding three months. Job creation in the transport and IT/BPO sectors declined by 3,000 and 4,000, respectively. The automobile sector was the best performer, adding 19,000 jobs, followed by 4,000 in the handloom/powerloom sector, and 3,000 in the leather sector, the survey showed.
“The slump in job growth in the first three months of the calendar year was largely due to two reasons: first, industry was waiting for a change in government and hence cautious about hiring, and second, human resource departments may have been busy planning for the next financial year than going on hiring during that period," said Rituparna Chakaraborty, senior vice-president of staffing company Teamlease Services Pvt. Ltd, adding that hiring sentiment had improved in nearly all sectors following the change in government.
Chakraborty said the labour ministry needs to widen the scope of the survey and add more services sectors to reflect the employment scenario in the country. “They have to add sectors like consumer durables, banking and finance, and e-commerce, among others, which are very vibrant these days," she said.
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