Labour market

This paper examines the job-seeking behaviour, various traits of labour employability, and the nature of mobility to achieve employment aspirations of the North East migrant workers in Bengaluru. It shows that migrants extensively use social networks for finding employment. The use of social networks and flexibility in job search shortens the waiting period. Their skill levels and the major factors that influence their hiring are discussed in detail.

This article portrays the trajectory of Uttar Pradesh’s labour market outcomes between 2011 and 2020 based on the employment and unemployment situation and the Periodic Labour Force Survey data. It finds a deepening employment crisis in the state, worse than what is prevailing in the country; this crisis is severe in rural areas and for women, though even men, in comparison to their status in the past, find themselves in a new low. We find absolute declines in labour and workforce in the state with shrinking self and casual employment. There is an increase in regular salaried jobs, both in absolute terms and proportions. The employment crisis has affected people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder more, marking a dangerous form of livelihood crisis in the state.

This paper estimates the extent of discrimination in employment, occupation and wages against the Scheduled Castes and its impact on poverty in urban regular salaried labour market in recent years. Discrimination in employment and wages is found to be very high in private sector and lesser in public sector. Discrimination in employment and wages leads to reduced wage income which enhances poverty of the discriminated group. The finding calls for policy reform in both private and public sectors to ensure non-discriminatory access to SCs in employment and wages.

Unemployment among the young increased sharply as the gap between labour absorption and labour supply widened in India during 2012–18. During this period, the non-agricultural sectors—industry, construction and services–were unable to absorb the rising supply of young adults who were potential job seekers. The growth of rural incomes and rural construction jobs slowed down and manufacturing employment declined by one million jobs. Women responded to the labour supply—demand mismatch by withdrawing from the labour market altogether. The jobs crisis among men aged 15 to 29 years was acute, as they comprised 68.3% of all the unemployed in India in 2018.

Since 1980-81, manufacturing sector output has grown at 7 per cent per year, with economic reforms making little difference to the trend in the 1990s. But growth has decelerated over the last seven years, after peaking in 1995-96. Why is this so? The reforms have narrowly focused on policy-induced restrictions on supply, ignoring the demand constraint due to the cut in public infrastructure investment since the late 1980s, and indifferent agricultural performance in the 1990s. These issues have to be squarely addressed to revive industrial growth, and to reap the benefits of the investment boom in organised manufacturing in the last decade.