GOVERNMENT DATA GIVEN IN RAJYA SABHA CONCEALS FRIGHTENING UNEMPLOYMENT

The data given by the Union Ministry of State for Labour and Employment Ms. Shobha Karandlaje in a  written reply in Rajya Sabha on December 5, 2024 conceals the frightening ground level reality of unemployment in India. The pattern is simple – first various government agencies produce data portraying rosy picture on employment front, and the Centre goes on repeating this, and the propaganda is so loud that it drowns the desperate voices of the unemployed.

Centre highlighted that worker population ratio rose, unemployment rate dropped, and formalization of jobs that is quality jobs had risen. The data were taken from the annual Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2023-24, Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE) (2022-23), and the KLEMS (Capital, Labour, Energy, Materials, and Services) database by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). All the databases were already convincingly suspicious, and were sufficiently refuted in the past by many analysts.

The reply further mentioned the government announcement in the Budget 2024-25, referring the Prime Minister’s package of 5 schemes and initiatives to facilitate employment, skilling and other opportunities for 4.1 crore youth over a 5-year period with a central outlay of Rs. 2 lakh crores, without mentioning how much progress has already been achieved since there is little progress in these schemes, even though the budget exercises have already begun for the next financial year 2025-26, which will be tabled within less than two months on February 1, 2025.

The propaganda machine of the government is busy in protecting the image of the Prime Minister of India
Narendra Modi especially regarding his promises fulfilled. Everybody knows his promise of ‘work for every hand’ made during election campaigns in 2014, which was later interpreted 2 crore jobs every year, since that much number of people were estimated joining in India’s workforce every year. The data now given in the Rajya Sabha refers to RBI’s KLEMS provisional data 2023-24, which said employment in the country
increased to 64.33 crore in 2023- 24 compared to 47.15 crore in 2014-15. Total increase in employment during 2014-15 to 2023-24 was about 17.18 crore, the Union Ministry of Labour said.

It was during 2024 Lok Sabha election, the Labour Secretary of Union Ministry of Labour and Employment has said that the RBI data to be published soon showed such an increase in employment. PM Modi had also claimed the same, and the reality came to light when the RBI data wars released on July 8. RBI’s data was found to be questionable. In the year 2014- 15 we had 471.46 million employed persons, which rose to
472.04 million in 2015-16. For the year 2016-17, when millions of MSMEs were closed and most of them reduced their operation up to 75 per cent after the demonization in November 2016, and millions of
workers lost their jobs, the RBI data showed 1.2 per cent increase in employment which increased to 473.2 million.

For the year, 2017-18, when even NSSO data showed 45 years high unemployment rate at 6.1 per cent, the RBI data showed that employment increased by 1.8 per cent to 475 million. For the year 2018-19, RBI data on employment showed a jump of 17.6 per cent to 492.6 million. In 2019-20, RBI data showed a jump in employment be 41.8 per cent that rose to 534.4 million. The more mysterious RBI data came for 2020-21, the year of the lockdown and COVID-19 crisis when the entire economy came to a halt. RBI data said that employment jumped to 31.2 per cent for that year and it reached to 565.6 million. The next COVID-19 crisis year was 2021-22, and the RBI data showed 11.9 per cent jump in employment which reached to 577.5 million.

For 2022-23 the data showed 19.2 per cent jump to 596.7 million, and for 2023-24 the jump was 46.7 per cent to 643.3 million. This obviously suspicious RBI data has again been given in the Rajya Sabha to show a rosy picture on employment front.

It is also a well-known fact that by 2017-18, unemployment rate rose to 6.1 per cent which was 45 years
high, which was leaked followed by resignation of officials of National Statistics Office alleging suppression of the data. The data was finally released by the government after 2019 election. The Centre had changed the labour data collection method and launched new PLFS in 2017-18, facing severe criticism on rise of unemployment. PLFS produces two sets of data – one is on usual status basis, and the other is on Current Weekly Status (CWS) basis.

The data on usual status basis is largely used by government propaganda machinery since it is always much lower than the unemployment rate calculated on the CWS basis. The data given in the Rajya Sabha referring Worker Population Ratio (WPR) also said, “employment during the last 7 years including COVID period has increased from 46.8 per cent in 2017-18 to 58.2 per cent in 2023- 24. During the same period,
Unemployment Rate (UR) on usual status for persons of age 15 years and above has decreased from 6.0% to 3.2%.”

The fact is PLFS 2023-24 wraps up disturbing level of India’s labour market distortion. For the year 2023-24 the unemployment rate on CWS basis was 4.9 per cent and the proportion of unemployed in population was 2.1 per cent. Government’s propaganda machine does not talk this higher level of unemployment but they always use usual status lower level of employment.

Further, PLFS 2023-24 shows that 19.4 per cent people were counted as employed who were actually
helping in the household enterprises and were not getting wages at all. Number of such people had risen from 18.3 per cent in 2022-23, and 17.5 per cent in 2021-22. Then there are own account workers, which are about 39 per cent, and most of them are employed in very low earning jobs which are actually unemployment in disguise.

A total of 58.4 per cent of the total employed people in 2023-24 were self-employed. The percentage of
self-employed has risen from 55.8 per cent in 2021-22 and 57.3 per cent in 2022-23. It is indicative of the declining job opportunities in the labour market which enforcing people to become either helping hand in household enterprises or own account worker so that they can survive amidst lack of social security coverage. Regular wage and salaried jobs have been almost stagnant, the PLFS 2023-24 shows. It was 21.5 per cent in 2021-22, declined to 20.9 per cent in 2022- 23, and reached 21.7 per cent in 2023-24. Share of casual labour in the work force was also declining which was 19.8 per cent in 2023- 24, but was 21.8 per cent in 2022- 23 and 22.7 per cent in 2021-22.

It should also be noted that those who get one hours of paid work in a week are also counted as employed, and also those who out of frustration after not finding job in the market has left searching for jobs. Such is the calibration in producing an inflated employment data and reduced unemployment data.

The Union Ministry of Labour and Employment has also stated in its reply in the Rajya Sabha that as per
the available Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE) report, the estimated number of workers has increased to 10.96 crores in 2022-23 from 7.79 crore in 2021-22. It is a sharp increase in low quality jobs. Nevertheless, the reply said that 7  crore net subscribers have joined Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) between September 2017 and September 2024 indicating increase in
formalisation of the job market.

It is also well known fact that there has been severe shortage of decent jobs in India that prompted Union
Government to bring three Employment Linked Schemes in the Budget 2024-25, and very little progress has yet been achieved. EPFO is being in the process of being revamped.

The Union government is therefore in urgent need to take concrete steps for employment generation in the
forthcoming budget 2024-25. The promise of providing ‘work for all hands’ in 2014 must be implemented in right earnest from at least 2025, 11 years after the promise was initially made. Calibration of only data on paper to show rosy picture and image building of the government does not serve the real purpose on the ground.

Union Budget 2025-26 must reassess the various programmes intended for employment generation to find out the gaps and take steps including increase in capital expenditure, MGNREGA fund for the rural areas, introducing similar employment guarantee schemes for urban areas, and recognising the service workers
and others on honourarium as workers to provide more decent works.