The first household-based unemployment survey in the country, conducted by the Labour Bureau, has found jobless rates as high as 9.4 per cent, compared to the 2.8 per cent estimated by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) in 2007.
The survey, done for 2009-2010 and escheming the 'usual status' approach, implies that about 40 million people are jobless, compared to the 10 million estimated in the 2007 survey. The new survey also points to a significant drop in the share of the agricultural sector in total employment, to 45 per cent from the 67 per cent reported in the 2007 one.
The Labour Bureau comes under the Union labour ministry and will conduct such surveys every year. The 'usual status' approach looked at a person’s employment status over the past six months. NSSO got a 2.8 per cent unemployment rate using this method.
While the ministry says the Survey's unemployment data could be an aberration caused by recession, the Labour Bureau has said that while recession was to blame for the job losses reported, the jump was also a reflection of a more comprehensive job done by the survey .
The 2.8 per cent reported by the NSSO survey of 2007-08, said Labour Bureau Director-General B N Nanda, were too low for a country like India, and the ministry had always felt so. “That was why we decided to have our own labour surveys from this year,” he says. However, he attributes the huge jump in unemployment to jobs lost to lower growth in 2009.
Few regular jobs
The new survey, conducted in all 28 states and the Union Territories, with a sample of 46,000 households, has estimated the worker population at 32.5 per cent at the overall level, while the labour force (people who are employed and willing to be employed) was 35.9 per cent of the population. The unemployment rate for men was eight per cent and for women, 14.6 per cent.
The survey estimates that self-employment is the dominant category among employed persons. Of every 1,000 persons employed, 439 were self-employed, while 168 were regular wage/salaried. The other 393 are employed as casual labour.
Agriculture continues to be the top employer but its capacity has shrunk dramatically, to 455 persons per 1,000 at the overall level. In rural India, 576 persons of every 1,000 were engaged in agriculture, forestry and fisheries. The sector employed nearly 67 per cent of people in 2007.
Nanda says his results are reliable, while also saying the two sets of data are not strictly comparable. For, the samples of the two surveys differ. The NSSO covered 125,000 households, while the Labour Bureau covered barely 46,000 houeholds. Again, while the NSSO followed the calendar year, the Bureau followed the financial year. All these make a difference in the answers you get to the question of whether a person was unemployed for the past six months.
The ministry, while releasing the report, did not comment on the contents. While the advisor, labour, Ashok Sahu, refused to explain the steep unemployment rates reflected in the survey, Amarjit Kaur, deputy director general, employment, said the increase was an aberration and not a reflection of the general trend. Recession could be the reason for the jump, she said.
