136 million likely to lose job in India, post coronavirus lockdown

One of the sectors which is going to face severe problems resulting from the 21 day lockdown, will be the employment sector.

According to a report in Livemint, a human development economist and professor at the Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University, Santosh Mehrotra has stated that in his analysis. In a paper co-authored with Jajati K Parida of the department of economic studies, Central University Punjab (India’s Employment Crisis: Rising Education Levels And Falling Non-agricultural Job Growth), Mehrotra pegs the job-share of the informal sector at 90.7% overall and 83.5% in the non-farm sectors. Most estimates in the paper are based on NSS and PLFS data.

According to this paper, India’s labour force is about 495 million. In the year 2017-18, around 30 million were unemployed, which implies that 465 million are currently employed.

Around 136 million workers across the country or more than 50 per cent 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 this category. Many of them work in construction.

Since there are 260 million people employed in India’s non-farm sector (agriculture employs another 205 million), the number of informal workers totals about 217 million across services, manufacturing and non manufacturing sectors. The manufacturing sector too is stressed, reported LiveMint

According to a report in Livemint, Numbers pieced together from the paper written by Mehrotra and Jajati K Parida suggests that about 28 million have no written jobs contracts in manufacturing; 49 million in non-manufacturing; and 59 million in services in 2017-18.

These are the people who are most likely to have no jobs after the lockdown because it’s easy to fire them.