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Five new job surveys to help gather data for national employment policy
The surveys will begin in April and will take about six months to complete. They will offer a segmented view of the jobs’ economy, focusing on data that have largely been missing
Five new job surveys are being rolled out by the labour office to capture unaccounted segments or blind spots in the country’s labour markets. They will generate high-frequency, dependable data necessary for a planned national employment policy, officials have said.
An expert committee appointed by the government has finalised the design of these all-India surveys, one each on domestic workers, migrant workers, professionals and the transport sector, apart from an “all-India Quarterly Establishment-based Employment Survey”.
The surveys will begin in April and will take about six months to complete. They will offer a segmented view of the jobs’ economy, focusing on data that have largely been missing, rendering much of the country’s employment-unemployment data unreliable.
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According to the International Labour Organization’s manual for nations, a national employment policy is a “comprehensive plan for achieving a country’s employment goals”. Countries need them because “employment challenges are getting more and more complex”, it states.
India needs reliable employment data for decision-making because economic growth has not automatically led to more formal, decent jobs. Informal employment, which does not offer social and legal protections, is still widespread and wage inequality is rising.
Official statisticians depend on the periodic labour force survey (PLFS), the latest available data on employment-unemployment, which covered the period July 2017-June 2018 and was released in June 2019. As a survey, it is an inadequate gauge of the sectors the new jobs surveys aim to cover.
The new surveys will look at the large, lower tier of jobs in a fast-changing labour market, which has seen new categories emerge, such as gig workers. Lack of information from these unorganised employment sectors, about which there are little data and insights, have held back the creation of a proposed national employment policy.
The key aim of the policy, a first, is to formalise large informal segments of the jobs economy. It will include so-called gig workers.
A majority of the country’s workers, almost 90%, are employed in the informal unorganised sector.
According to Rajesh Raj Natarajan, a labour economist of Sikkim University, moving to formal employment can push up individual incomes by 63.9%. His research was based on data from the India Human Development Survey of 2004–2005 and 2011–2012.
“The surveys will give us industry-specific data. It will go on to be very helpful in formulating a national employment policy. We are currently engaged in field training of staff,” said DS Negi, director-general of the labour bureau.
India’s large pool of migrant workers is probably the most crucial segment. As factories were shut during the pandemic-induced lockdown last year, thousands of migrant workers fled urban centres, facing hunger and distress.
In September, the government told Parliament that it had no data on migrant workers. “This was the main reason why help could not reach them,” said Ravi Ratnoo of the staffing firm Ajeevan. The survey on migrants will collect information on migration patterns, job profiles, living and work conditions.
A novel cohort-based migration metric, a statistical tool developed by former chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian, revealed an annual “inter-state migrant population of about 60 million and an inter-district migration as high as 80 million” between 2001 and 2011.
The survey on professionals will capture self-employed professionals and employees hired by them. For instance, a doctor with a private practice and staff employed by him at his clinic.
The transport sector survey will take into account gig workers employed with ride-hailing apps for the time. The quarterly establishment survey will track changes in general employment. The one on domestic workers will give the first estimate of domestic household workers, most of whom are women. They are currently out of any social security shield.
