Improving employment data: Task force suggestion will take years to execute

The Task Force on Improving Employment Data was remiss in not mentioning this low-hanging fruit. All its suggestions will take years to execute

Earlier this month, on January 2, I wrote in this column that the government could be employing about 23 million people. This was an estimate based on some simple projections of the number of people employed in state governments, quasi governments and local government bodies.

Last week, Dr. Pulak Ghosh of IIM, Bangalore and Dr. Soumya Kanti Ghosh, Group Economist at State Bank of India (Ghosh and Ghosh) released results of their work that, among many other things, said that a conservative estimate of employment in government is 17 million.

Ghosh and Ghosh make their estimate using one set of