Though the government is claiming that the Indian economy is on the recovery path after having suffered badly due to global meltdown, employment in the textiles sector, including apparels, is still a victim with job generation in the sector declining by 1.19 lakh during January-March this year compared to October-December 2009. This is the case in other sectors like handloom/powerloom and transport too.
The decline in employment in these sectors was more when compared to an overall increase of employment by 61,000 during the same period (January-March 2010) in other sectors vis-a-vis the previous quarter.
The Labour Bureau of the Union Labour and Employment Ministry, which conducted a “quarterly quick employment surveys in affected sectors” last month with January-March 2010 as the study period, revisited the sample establishments covered in the previous surveys to assess the changes in employment. The bureau, which is assigned to study the impact of global meltdown on the Indian industries, collected information from 2,815 industrial units by covering 21 centres spread across 11 States and union territories.
As far as earnings of the workers is concerned, it had moved up by 7.1 per cent during the period in all sectors except in leather units where earnings have declined by 1.4 per cent. The maximum increase in the earnings is seen in the IT/BPO sector where it has increased by 9.3 per cent during the period.
Textiles including apparels, leather, metals, automobiles, gems and jewellery, transport, IT/BPO and handloom/ powerloom were some of the sectors taken up for the study. While the employment in the contract category of workers has increased by 74,000, the employment of direct workers has decreased by 13,000. Similarly in the exporting units the employment increased by 1.87 lakh during January-March 2010, but in the non-exporting units it declined by 1.25 lakh.
An analysis of changes in employment that took place during the quarters falling in financial year 2009-10 (that is, March, 2010 over March, 2009), indicates that the overall employment in the eight selected sectors covered in the quarterly surveys has increased by 10.66 lakh (0.16 per cent) during this period. In IT/BPO sector the increase in the employment is maximum (6.90 lakh) during 2009-10.
