India : Steady economic growth fails to revive job market

Notwithstanding the Indian economy’s steady growth, sectors such as telecom, engineering and electronics have witnessed a decline in employment rate over the last four years, says a report.

“The economic growth witnessed at the macro-level has not translated into more jobs creation,” according to Care Ratings report on ‘Employment in the Corporate Sector’.

The industries that witnessed decline in employment growth were telecom, engineering, electronics, packaging and cables, it added.

Care Ratings said the economic growth performance has been impressive but the employment curve has not kept pace with the same.

The report analysed employment data across various sectors as well as industries and is based on a sample of 1,072 companies across various sectors.

Care Ratings opined that jobs need to be created not just to sustain the issue of employment but also add to consumer demand, which has been lagging in the last three years and has to be reversed.

Negative growth under the manufacturing segment was witnessed in electronics (4.5 per cent), engineering (6.6 per cent) and telecommunication (7.9 per cent).

Other sectors that saw a negative growth in FY2014-15 were non financial services (17.4 per cent), construction (17.1 per cent) and mining (3.8 per cent), the report added.

“Manufacturing in particular has not done too well, while services performed better. The preference for services even for the pool of employable people can distort the demand-supply equation when manufacturing is back on track,” it said.

The report revealed that manufacturing had the highest share in employment accounting for more than 40 per cent of jobs creation, followed by banking (23 per cent) and information technology (18.4 per cent), the report said.

This means that the future of job creation would largely be dependent on the growth in the manufacturing sector and the low growth in the last 3 years is a cause for concern, it said.

Financial and other non financial services together account for 5.

2 per cent share in total employment.

The highest growth rate in jobs were in forgings, consumer foods, IT, breweries and pharmaceuticals. Meanwhile, in 2014-15, IT, banking and financial services were the only sectors to witness positive growth