It's come to this: 22 million men found jobs when women left theirs

According to a report by TeamLease Services, only 22 million men found new jobs in the past five years in India. However, the net addition to the job market was only around one million.

How did that happen? Well, because 22 million women left the job market over the same period.

Job growth has been a growing concern in India, despite high economic growth in the past few years. Much of this low growth has been explained away by the argument that many women choose not to enter the job market because they opt for higher education or training.

That sounds interesting, but there isn’t enough data to back it up. So, why are women exiting the job market in India?

Sangeeta Lala, co-founder and senior vice president of TeamLease Services, told CNBC Tv 18 women are still considered as ‘outsiders’ in the Indian job market. They are, in essence, considered as support staff instead of actual contenders for top or core job functions.

She said better vocational training needed to be provided to help women move up the ladder by the time they are in their 30s or 40s or even become entrepreneurs.

So far, India has not yet stepped into pink-slip territory, Lala told the news channel.

But individual performances are increasingly coming under scrutiny. For example, consumer goods company Britannia, laid off 42 executives because it thought they were underperformers, according to a Times of India report .

For sure, there is growing caution about hiring in large numbers and reduced tolerance for employees considered not performing up to par.“There is going to be more focus on productivity, on the last six months to one year of performance to see whether you are part of the critical mass that should be carried forward or not,” Lala told CNBC TV18.

It must be remembered, however, that the organised sector accounts for only a minor part of the workforce (barely 10 percent) in India. If there are mass layoffs in the unorganised sector, they tend to go unnoticed.

The Teamlease report pointed out that while 0.3 percent of jobs in India were lost in 2008 during the global financial crisis, the loss in the unorganised sector was much higher at 6 percent.

How 2011-2012 turns out in terms of job creation remains to be seen.

Watch video:Hold on to your jobs; no room to slack: TeamLease Services