Economic survey: IT sector, the biggest job creator in FY12

The job market has emerged unscathed from a slowdown in the economic growth rate and the country has maintained an upward trend in hiring activities continuously for about three years, the Economic Survey said on Thursday.

As per the latest data, the country saw more than nine lakh jobs being added in the one-year period ended September 2011, when IT and BPO sectors accounted for a major chunk of the new jobs (about eight lakh), said the government's pre-budget economic report card for current financial year.

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On the employment front, the country has been able to withstand the adverse impact of the global crisis and generate employment since 2009," the Survey noted.

It further said that the government programmes for employment generation have been planned with a "long term outlook and (are) free of any elements of protectionism.

The MGNREGA, which aims at enhancing livelihood security of rural households, has been instrumental in creating employment opportunities and placing additional income in the hands of the poor.

This in turn has fuelled the supply side demand, albeit at "higher food inflation, the survey said.

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The MGNREGA provides at least one hundred days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. It also mandates 1/3 participation for women.

The survey further noted overall employment in one-year period ending September 2011 increased by 9.11 lakh.

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The highest increase was recorded in IT/BPO (7.96 lakh) sector followed by 1.07 lakh in metals, 0.71 lakh in automobiles, 0.08 lakh in gems & jewellery and 0.07 lakh in leather industries during the period.

During the July-September quarter of 2011, employment increased in all sectors, except leather and transport. The quarter saw total job creation of 3.15 lakh.

Overall, employment across all sectors witnessed a net addition of 23.58 lakh between October 2008 (first survey) to September, 2011 (twelfth survey).

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Interestingly, employment growth in the organised sector, public and private combined, increased by 1.9 per cent in 2010, lower than the annual growth for the previous year.

Only 15.6 per cent of the total workforce had regular wage employment/salaried work during 2009 10 while 33.5 per cent was casual labour and 51 per cent was self-employed.

While the government has consciously undertaken a large increase in budgetary allocations for anti-poverty programmes and employment-generation schemes, policy structures need to be firmed up to facilitate effective implementation and said that there is need to quickly link the UID to all social sector programmes for better outcomes.