Eco Survey: Overall employment rose by 6.94 lakh

New Delhi: Overall employment in the last one year to June 2012 increased by nearly by 7 lakh led by the IT and BPO sector that accounted for almost half of the increase.

“Upward trend in employment since July 2009 continues despite the economic slowdown,” the Economic Survey for the year 2012-13 tabled in the Lok Sabha today by the Finance Finance Minister P Chidambaram said.

[caption id=“attachment_642644” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] India is on the brink of a demographic revolution with the proportion of working-age population between 15 and 59. Reuters[/caption]

A sector wise analysis shows that the textiles sector including apparels saw 1.70 lakh job additions, followed by transport sector (0.45 lakh), metals (0.26 lakh), gems and jewellery (0.19 lakh) and automobiles (0.11 lakh) in June 2012 over June 2011.

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On the other hand, employment in handloom/powerloom and leather sectors has marginally declined during this period, the survey said. There has been a sustained and consecutive increase in employment in both the public and private sectors covered at overall level during the last eleven quarters with a total addition of 30.73 lakh employment during this recovery period, the survey added.

The survey further said given that India is one of the youngest large nations in the world, human development assumes great economic significance for the country provided measures are being taken to seize the “demographic dividend”.

India is on the brink of a demographic revolution with the proportion of working-age population between 15 and 59 years likely to increase from approximately 58 percent in 2001 to more than 64 percent by 2021, the Survey said.

Moreover around 63.5 million new entrants to the working age group between 2011 and 2016, the bulk of whom will be in the relatively younger age group of 20-35 years. The annual growth rate of employment in the private sector in 2011 was 5.6 percent whereas that in the public sector was negative.

The share of women in organised-sector employment was around 20.5 percent during 2009-11 and has remained nearly constant in recent years.

PTI