1. Workers and Employment

• The total money value of all such final goods and services produced in a country in a year is called its gross domestic product for that year.
• We pay for our imports and get from our exports we find that there are net earnings for the country which may be positive (if we have exported more in value terms than imported) or negative (if imports exceeded exports in value terms) or Zero (if exports and imports were of the same value).
• When we add this earning (plus or minus) from foreign transactions, we get the country’s gross national product for that year.
• Those activities which contribute to the gross national product are called economic activities.
• All those who are engaged in economic activities, in whatever capacity (High or low) are workers.
• The nature of employment in India is multifaceted. Some get employment throughout the year and some do not.
• Many workers do not get fair wages for their work. While estimating the number of workers, all those who are engaged in economic activities are included as employed.
• During 2017-18, India had about a 471 million-strong workforce.
• Since the majority of our people reside in rural areas, the proportion of the workforce residing there is higher.
• The rural workers constitute about two-thirds of this 471 million.
• Men from the majority of the workforce in India
• About 77 per cent of the workers are men and the rest are women (men and women include child labourers of respective sexes).
• Women workers account for one-fourth of the rural workforce whereas, in urban areas, they are just one-fifth of the workforce.
• Women carry out works like cooking, fetching water and fuel wood and participating in farm labour.
• They are not paid wages in cash or the form of grains, at times they are not paid to all.
• For this reason, these women are not categorized as workers.
• Economists argue that these women should also be called workers.

2. Participation of people in employment

• Worker –population ratio is an indicator which is used for analysing the employment situation in the country.
• This ratio is useful in knowing the proportion of the population that is actively contributing to the production of goods and services of a country.
• If the ratio is higher, it means that the engagement of people is greater.
• If the ratio for a country is medium or low, it means that a very high proportion of its population is not involved directly in economic activities.
• The population is defined as the total number of people who reside in a particular locality at a particular point in time.
• If you want to know the worker-population ratio for India, divide the total number of workers in India by the population and multiply it by 100 to get the worker-population ratio for India.
• For every 100 persons, about 35 (by rounding off 34.7) are workers in India.
• In urban areas, the proportion is about 34, whereas, in rural India, the ratio is about 35.
• People in rural areas have limited resources to earn a higher income and participate more in the employment market.
• Many do not go to schools, colleges and other training institutions.
• Even if some go, they discontinue in the middle to join the workforce.
• In urban areas, a considerable section can be studied in various educational institutions.
• Urban people have a variety of employment opportunities. They look for the appropriate job to suit their qualifications and skills.
• In rural areas, people cannot stay at home as their economic condition may not allow them to do so.
• According to the Worker-Population Ratio 2017-2018 in India,
• The difference in participation rates is very large in urban areas for every 100 urban females, only about 14 are engaged in some economic activities.
• In rural areas, for every 100 rural women about 18 participate in the employment market.
• It is common to find that where men can earn high incomes, families discourage female members from taking up jobs.
• Many household activities done by women are not recognized as productive work.
• This narrow definition of work leads to the non-recognition of women’s work and therefore, to the underestimation of the number of women workers in the country.
• Think of the women actively engaged in many activities within the house and at family farms who are not paid for such work.
• As they certainly contribute to the maintenance of the household and farms.

3. Self-employed and hired workers

• By knowing the status with which a worker is placed in an enterprise, it may be possible to know one dimension of the quality of employment in a country.
• It also enables us to know the attachment a worker has with his or her job and the authority she or he has over the enterprise and other co-workers.
• Workers who own and operate an enterprise to earn their livelihood are known as self-employed. About 52 per cent workforce in India belongs to this category.
• About 25 per cent of India’s workforce is casual wage labourers.
• Such labourers are casually engaged in other’s farms and return, get remuneration for the work done.
• Workers like the civil engineer working in construction company account for 23 per cent of India’s workforce.
• When a worker is engaged by someone or an enterprise and paid his or her wages regularly, they are known as regular salaried employees.
• The regular salaried employment, both women and men are found to be so engaged in greater proportion.
• Men form 23 per cent whereas women form 21 per cent, The gap is very small.
• The self-employed and casual wage labourers are found more in rural areas than in urban areas.
• Both self-employment and regular-wage salaried jobs are greater.
• In the former, since the majority of those depending on farming own plots of land and cultivate independently, the share of self-employed is greater.
• The nature of work in urban areas is different. Everyone cannot run factories, shops and offices of various types.
• Moreover, enterprises in urban areas require workers regularly.

4. Employment in firms, factories and offices

• In the course of the economic development of a country, labour flows from agriculture and other related activities to industry and services.
• In this process, workers migrate from rural to urban areas.
• Eventually, at a much later stage, the industrial sector begins to lose its share of total employment as the service sector enters a period of rapid expansion.
• Economic activities are divided into eight different industrial divisions They are
• Agriculture, Mining and Quarrying, Manufacturing, Electricity, Gas and Water Supply, Construction, Trade and Transport and Storage and Services
• All the working persons engaged in these divisions can be clubbed into three major sectors (Primary sector -Agriculture, Mining and Quarrying, Secondary sector- Manufacturing, Electricity, Gas and Water Supply, and Service sector- Construction, Trade and Transport and Storage and Service primary
• The primary sector is the main source of employment for the majority of workers in India.
• The secondary sector employs only about 24 per cent of the workforce.
• About 24 per cent of workers are in the service sector.
• About 64 per cent of the workforce in rural India depends on agriculture, forestry and fishing.
• About 20 per cent of rural workers are working in manufacturing industries, construction and other industrial activities.
• The service sector employs only about 16 per cent of rural workers.
• Agriculture is not a major source of employment in urban areas where people are mainly engaged in the service sector.
• About 60 per cent of urban workers are in the service sector. The secondary sector gives employment to about 35 per cent of the urban workforce.
• Though both men and women workers are concentrated in the primary sector, women workers' concentration is very high there.
• About 63 per cent of the female workforce is employed in the primary sector whereas less than half of males work in that sector.
• Men get opportunities in both secondary and service sectors.

5. Growth and the Changing Structure of Employment

• The two developmental indicators growth of employment and GDP
• Sixty years of planned development have been aimed at the expansion of the economy through an increase in national output and employment.
• During the period 1950 to 2010, the Gross Domestic Product of India grew positively and was higher than the employment growth.
• There was always a fluctuation in the growth of GDP.
• During this period, employment grew at the rate of not more than 2 per cent.
• In the late 1990s employment growth started declining and reached the level of growth that India had in the early stages of planning.
• During these years, we also find a widening gap between the growth of GDP and employment.
• This means that in the Indian economy without generating employment, we have been able to produce more goods and services.
• Scholars refer to this phenomenon as jobless growth.
• Developmental strategies in many countries, including India have aimed at reducing the proportion of people depending on agriculture.
• The distribution of the workforce by industrial sectors shows a substantial shift from farm work to non-farm work.
• In 1972-73, about 74 per cent of the workforce was engaged in the primary sector and in 2011- 12, this proportion declined to about 50 per cent.
• Secondary and service sectors are showing a promising future for the Indian workforce. These sectors have increased from 11 to 24 per cent and 15 to 27 per cent respectively.
• The distribution of the workforce in different statuses indicates that over the last five decades (1972-2018), People have moved from self-employment and regular salaried employment to casual wage work.
• Yet self-employment continues to be the major employment provider.

6. In the formalisation of the Indian workforce

• Since India’s independence has been to provide a decent livelihood to its people.
• It has been envisaged that the industrialization strategy would bring surplus workers from agriculture to industry with a better standard of living than in developed countries.
• We have seen in the preceding section that even after 70 years of planned development, more than half of the Indian workforce depends on farming as the major source of livelihood.
• Economists argue that over the years, the quality of employment has been deteriorating. Even after working for more than 10-20 years.
• A small section of the Indian workforce is getting regular income.
• The government, through its labour laws, enable them to protect their rights in various ways.
• This section of the workforce forms trade unions, and bargains with employers for better wages and other social security measures.
• The workforce is classified into two categories, workers in formal and informal sectors, which are also referred to as organized and unorganized sectors.
• All the public sector establishments and those private sector establishments which employ 10 hired workers or more are called formal sector establishments and those who work in such establishments are formal sector workers.
• All other enterprises and workers working in those enterprises and workers working in those enterprises from the informal sector.
• Thus, the informal sector includes millions of farmers, agricultural labourers, owners of small enterprises and people working in those enterprises as also the self-employed who do not have any hired workers.
• It also includes all non-farm casual wage labourers who work for more than one employer such as construction workers and head load workers.
• Those who are working in the formal sector enjoy social security benefits. They earn more than those in the informal sector.
• Developmental planning envisaged that as the economy grows more and more sector workers and the proportion of workers engaged in the informal sector would dwindle.
• In 2011-12 there were about 473 million workers in India. There were about 30 million workers in the formal sector.
• About only six per cent (30/473 ×100)! Thus, the rest 94 per cent are in the informal sector.
• In 2011-12, the year for which gender-wise data on formal-informal sector employment is about 20 per cent of the formal sector and 30 per cent of informal sector workers are women.
• In the informal sector, male workers account for 69 per cent of the workforce.
• Since the late 1970s, many developing countries, including India, started paying attention to enterprises and workers in the informal sector as employment in the formal sector is not growing.
• Workers and enterprises in the informal sector do not get regular income; they do not have any protection from the government.
• Workers are dismissed without any compensation. The technology used in the informal sector enterprises is outdated.
• They also do not maintain any accounts. Workers in this sector live in slums and are squatters.
• Of late, owing to the efforts of the International Labour Organisation, the Indian government has initiated the modernization of informal sector enterprises and provision of social security measures to informal sector workers. 

7. Unemployment

Unemployment is a situation in which all those who, owing to lack of work, are not working but either seek work through employment exchanges, intermediaries, friends or relatives or by making applications to prospective employers or express their willingness or availability for work under the prevailing condition of work and remunerations.

Economists define an unemployed person as one who is not able to get employment for even one hour in a half a day.

There are three sources of data on unemployment

1. Reports of Census of India
2. National Sample Survey Organization’s Reports of the Employment Situation
3. Directorate General of Employment and Training Data of Registration with Employment Exchanges.

They provide different estimates of unemployment; they do provide us with the attributes of the unemployed and the variety of Unemployment prevailing in our country. Economists call unemployment prevailing on Indian farms disguised as unemployment.

8. Government and Employment Generation

• The employment generation programmes aim at providing not only employment but also services in areas such as primary health, primary education, rural drinking water, and nutrition.
• Assistance for people to buy income and employment-generating assets, development of community assets by generating wage employment.
• Construction of houses and sanitation, assistance for constructing houses, lying of rural roads, development of wastelands or degraded lands.