Abstract
India had been arguably experiencing ‘jobless growth’ since the early 1990s. This period, nevertheless, has witnessed an accelerated structural change in output wherein a service-centric growth has emerged, eclipsing the agriculture-based growth. Accompanying this transformation in output, the industrial structure of employment also has undergone a transformation whereby the share of agricultural employment has gradually declined. This chapter argues that jobless growth in India could perhaps be understood better within broad contours of structural transformation. Jobless growth in a developing country is a dynamic process of job creation, destruction, relocation and labour market tightening, rather than a mere stagnation of employment growth. Using NSSO data and KLEMS database from 1993–94 to 2011–12, evidence is provided towards inter-sectoral growth differences owing to structural transformation and withdrawal of surplus labour owing to transformation, along with capital labour substitution as the underlying factors that manifest as jobless growth in India.
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Notes
- 1.
The National Industrial Classification (NIC) broadly follows the International Standards of Industrial Classification (ISIC). The NIC is revised periodically to accommodate changes in the industrial structure of India. In order to make several rounds of industrial data comparable, the data are matched across years using a concordance table that identifies each comparable industry code across years. For this chapter NIC revision 2004 is used.
- 2.
India KLEMS database developed under the productivity measurement project of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) provides data on capital (K), labour (L), energy (E), materials (M) and services (S) and is available on the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) website.
- 3.
https://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/no-jobs-till-economy-ok/1119263/. Accessed on 25 August 2018.
- 4.
CMIE-BSE database defines unemployment rate as share of unemployed who are willing to work and are actively looking for a job; it is expressed as a percentage of the labour force. By definition these rates cover 15 years and above and have a reference period of 100 days prior to the day of survey.
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Acknowledgements
I acknowledge with thanks the research assistance provided by Chacko Babu for this chapter. All errors are mine.
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Abraham, V. (2019). The Dynamic Nature of Jobless Growth in India. In: Shyam Sundar, K.R. (eds) Globalization, Labour Market Institutions, Processes and Policies in India. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7111-0_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7111-0_18
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