India saw an addition of 16 million jobs in July 2021 but salaried jobs fell by 3.2 million compared to June while they were less by 10 million compared to pre-Covid levels, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy said.
In July 2021, while employment in agriculture grew by 11.2 million, the construction sector absorbed an additional 5.4 million and the service sector absorbed another 0.5 million while the manufacturing sector shed 0.8 million, it said.
As per the CMIE, the growth of employment in July was therefore mostly among agricultural labourers and construction workers. “This, with due respect to all forms of labour, is poor quality of employment. It is mostly informal and at least in the case of agriculture, very likely temporary in nature,” it said.
CMIE data shows the number of salaried workers in July at 76.5 million, which is 3.2 million less than they were in June and 3.6 million short of the pre-second wave level of 80 million in January-March 2021.
Further, compared to the pre-pandemic times when salaried jobs were of the order of 87 million, the fall is much larger at over 10 million. “The several lockdowns since April 2020 and their debilitating effects on the economy have cost the salaried job workers the most,” it added.
CMIE, in its weekly labour market analysis, said till investments do not pick up it may be difficult to see most of those 10 million salaried jobs lost since 2019-20 to come back. “This could be the biggest hurdle to India’s recovery.”
CMIE further said that the decline in salaried jobs is much larger at 11.7% since 2019-20 while business persons have seen a loss of 7.5% and small traders and daily wage labourers suffered a much smaller loss of 3.2%. Farm jobs, on the other hand, saw a jump of 9.6% during the same period as “some of these people who lost jobs migrated to become farmers”.
CMIE analysis of job data in August since 2016 shows the agricultural sector shed, on an average, about 3 million jobs after the Kharif sowing is over. “Unless the economy grows at a healthy clip, these people will find it difficult to find alternate jobs,” it said, adding that the absorption of such numbers exiting from agriculture in other sectors would be a challenge given the sluggish pace of economic recovery so far this year.