Focus on jobs is first for economic survey

New Delhi, Feb 27: Creation of jobs seems to be the flavour of the season and the government is showing some seriousness in job generation. And the IT sector still creates most jobs in India.

The Economic Survey 2012-13, tabled by the Finance Minister P. Chidambaram in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, has a special chapter on jobs and employment sector issues.

"The future holds promise for India provided we can seize the "demographic dividend" as nearly half the additions to the Indian labour force over the period 2011-30 will be in the age group 30-49," the survey said.

However, it admitted that India is creating jobs mainly in low productivity construction and not enough formal jobs in manufacturing, which typically are higher productivity. The high productivity service sector is also not creating enough jobs, the survey noted with concern as service sector is a high-pay industry.

"As the number of people looking for jobs rises, both because of the population dividend and because share of agriculture shrinks, these vulnerabilities will become important. Because good jobs are both the pathway to growth as well as the best form of inclusion, India has to think of ways of enabling their creation," the survey said.

The survey pointed out that overall employment in June 2012 over June 2011 increased by 6.94 lakh and confirmed the widely held belief that the highest increase was recorded in IT and business process outsourcing sector with 4.44 lakh jobs. This sector was followed by 1.70 lakh in textiles including apparels, 0.45 lakh in transport, 0.26 lakh in metals, 0.19 lakh in gems and jewellery and 0.11 lakh in automobiles.

Employment in handloom/powerloom and leather sectors declined marginally during that period, it said.
In export oriented units, employment at the overall level has increased by 5.81 lakh whereas in the non-exporting units, it has increased by 1.10 lakh during the period June 2012 over June 2011.

OneIndia News