Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Labour Bureau Report on Effect of Economic Slowdown on Employment in India (January to March, 2009) – Summary findings

As entrusted by Ministry of Labour and Employment, the Labour Bureau conducted a second quick survey to assess the impact of economic slowdown on employment in India for the quarter January to March, 2009. 

The highlights of the survey are as follows:

v A sample different from that for October – December 2008 was drawn on the basis of latest Annual Survey of Industries sampling frame for 2007-08 in the case of manufacturing sector i.e. textiles, leather, metals, automobiles and gems and jewellery. For IT/BPO sector, the frame has been collected from the Software Technological Parks of India (STPI). However in the absence of any sampling frame, the transport sector units located at selected centres were covered. In the case of handloom/power-loom sector, the list of units located at selected centres was obtained from the respective State industry departments.

v A sample of 3192 units pertaining to Textiles and Apparel, Metals, Gems and Jewellery, Automobile, Transport and IT/BPO; and by extending the coverage to Leather and Handloom/Power-loom Sectors was drawn for conducting the survey.

v Both the earlier survey of 2581 units and this sample indicate that in the quarter October – December 2008, there was more or less same rate of decline in employment i.e. around one percent confirming the representativeness of the samples. The earlier findings are thus validated in the second survey.

v The sample has been drawn from 21 centres in 10 states of Haryana (Panipat, Faridabad and Gurgaon), Uttar Pradesh (Noida, Kanpur and Agra); Tamil Nadu (Chennai, Coimbatore/Tiruppur and Erode), Punjab (Ludhiana and Jalandhar); West Bengal (Kolkata and Howrah), Gujarat (Ahmedabad and Surat), Maharashtra (Mumbai and Pune) besides Delhi, Andhra Pradesh (Hyderabad); Karnataka (Bangalore) and Union Territory of Chandigarh. 

v Two stage stratified sampling has been adopted for sample selection in this study.

Ø The first stage units are the districts/centres, which have been selected using purposive sampling keeping in view the concentration of establishments belonging to the sectors covered in the survey.

Ø The establishments as being the second stage units are selected using circular systematic sampling with random start after arranging the units in decreasing order of employment. The selection of first establishment and the establishments falling at regular intervals, which is worked out on the basis of total number of establishments in the sampling frame so arranged divided by the number of sample units determines the whole sample of the establishments to be covered under the survey.  

v The sample from each of the selected States was drawn in proportion of units in the sampling frame from these sectors. The numbers of schedules (establishments) covered were the highest at 1224 units for textiles including apparel followed by 889 schedules in metals and metal products, 278 schedules in IT/BPO, 240 Gems and Jewellery, 182 schedules in Leather, 160 schedules in Automobiles, 131 schedules in Handloom/Power-loom and 88 schedules in Transportation.

The analysis of employment trends as submitted in the second quarterly report by Labour Bureau is summarized as below:-

v During the quarter October-December, 2008 quarter, about half a million workers were assessed to have lost their jobs in these sectors. However, employment in selected sectors during the quarter January to March, 2009 is estimated to have increased by about a quarter million to 15.72 million. The employment in the selected sectors during March, 2009 still remains lower than employment in September, 2008, when the employment figure was 16.2 million.

v Total estimated employment in the sectors covered has increased by 0.6% during January-March, 2009 period. Non-exporting units have shown higher rate (0.92%) of increase in employment as compared to exporting units (0.28%).

v Sectors registering increase in employment during January-March, 2009 period are Gems & Jewellery (3.08%), Textiles (0.96%), IT/BPO (0.82%), Handloom/Power-loom (0.28%) and Automobiles (0.10%).

v Decline in employment during January-March, 2009 has been observed in Leather (2.76%), followed by Metals (0.56%) and Transport (0.36%).

v The increase in employment of direct workers has been observed to be 0.68% during January-March, 2009 in comparison to decline of 0.63% during October-December, 2008.

v During the course of the survey, data has also been collected to analyse impact on contractual workers. The employment of contract workers at overall level has remained unchanged during January-March, 2009 quarter, whereas the decline in contract workers was observed to be 3.88% during October-December, 2008.

v In view of the contracting and sub contracting of workers in the construction sector and as also non availability of any sampling frame, the impact on employment in the construction sector could not be assessed. Thus the construction sector requires a special study as during both the surveys undertaken by Labour Bureau, difficulties were experienced in the collection of data. The option of resorting to estimates based on employment elasticity to growth is a theoretical option, which would not yield the real picture.

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