Coronavirus lockdown might take away 136 million jobs

Lockdown has brought unprecedented loss to the Indian economy

As India battles to contain the spread of the virus, the employment sector will be badly hit

A report by a JNU scholar has put forward the dangers of India’s employment crisis

The study pegs the job-share of the informal sector at 90.7% overall and 83.5% in the non-farm sectors.

Most estimates in the report are based on NSS and PLFS data.

According to this paper, 465 million of India’s labour force is currently employed.

Around 136 million workers employed in non-agricultural sectors, have no contracts.

They are the most vulnerable. They have no written jobs contract.

These employees can be fired without notice or severance.

Most daily-wage earners or casual labourers fall in this category.

Since there are 260 million people employed in India’s non-farm sector

  217 million informal workers across services, manufacturing and non manufacturing sectors are also stressed.

About 28 million have no written jobs contracts in manufacturing

49 million in non-manufacturing and 59 million in services in 2017-18 have no written jobs

These are the people who are most likely to have no jobs after the lockdown

These workers are most vulnerable because it’s easy to fire them.

In other sectors also the after effects of the lockdown crisis might result in cost cuts.

The reduction of workforce might be extensively used to compensate the losses of lockdown

According to the study, the coronavirus pandemic will turn the job market worse