Jobs Data: CMIE

• 19 Aug 2020

Why in News

Recently, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) has released data related to jobs gained or lost during the Covid-19 lockdown period (April-July 2020).

• CMIE is a leading business information company. It was established in 1976, primarily as an independent think tank.
• CMIE produces economic and business databases and develops specialised analytical tools to deliver these to its customers for decision making and for research. It analyses the data to decipher trends in the economy.

Key Points

• Salaried Jobs:
  
  • They suffered a total loss estimated to be 18.9 million during April-July 2020.
    
    • 17.7 million salaried jobs were lost in April. After gaining 3.9 million jobs in June, 5 million jobs were again lost in July.
  • They offer better terms of employment and better wages, and have a higher share in urban parts of the country than rural parts.
  • They are more resilient to economic shocks and not lost easily, however, once lost they are far more difficult to retrieve.
  • Only 21% of all employment in India is in the form of a salaried employment.
  • Loss of urban salaried jobs is likely to have a particular debilitating impact on the economy, besides causing immediate hardship to middle-class households.
    
    • Since the lockdown was announced, several companies across sectors have taken to job cuts, along with salary reductions and leave without pay.
• Informal and Non-Salaried Jobs:
  
  • This category of job has shown improvement during the April-July 2020 increasing to 325.6 million in July 2020 from 317.6 million in 2019, an increase of 2.5%.
    
    • This is because of the opening of the country in a phased manner.
  • This category of employment accounted for about 32% of the total employment but it suffered 75% of the hit in April 2020.
    
    • Out of total 121.5 million jobs lost in April 2020, 91.2 million of the jobs were lost from this category.
    • Small traders, hawkers and daily wage labourers were the worst hit by the lockdown.
• Farm Jobs:
  
  • The jobs lost in the non-farm sectors have resulted in people moving towards farm employment. The farm sector gained 14.9 million jobs in the April-July 2020 period.
  • In 2019, 42.39% of the workforce in India was employed in agriculture.

Source: IE