Quarterly Employment Survey

What’s in News?

Quarterly Employment Survey (QES), which is a part of the All India Quarterly Establishment based Employment Survey (AQEES) was recently released by the Ministry of Labour.

Survey Highlights:

• Total employment generated by nine select non-farm sectors — manufacturing, construction, trade, transport, health, education, accommodation & restaurants, IT/BPOs, financial service is around 3.18 crore workers who were employed in about 5.31 lakh establishments between January and March 2022.
• There has been an increase of about four lakh workers compared with the third round of QES, which was done for the last three months of 2021.
• 86.4% of the workers were regular employees, and 8.7% were contractual employees followed by casual employees (2.3%) and self-employed (2%)
• Estimated employment in nine non-farm sectors rose from 3.14 crore during September-December 2021 to 3.18 crore in January-March 2022
• Education, manufacturing, trade and financial services together accounted for 84% of the total estimated units.
• Manufacturing continues to be the largest institutional employer in the country, employing about 38.5% of the workers
• The participation of women workers witnessed a marginal increase from 31.6% in the third quarter to 31.8% in the fourth quarter report.
• Women workers constituted about 52% of the workforce in the health sector
• In financial services, women far outnumber males among self-employed persons
• This has shown that there is a rising trend in the employment in organised sector.

All India Quarterly Establishment based Employment Survey (AQEES):

• The Labour Bureau had taken up AQEES to provide quarterly estimates about employment and related variables of establishments in both organised and unorganised segments of nine sectors — manufacturing, construction, trade, transport, education, health, accommodation and restaurant, IT / BPO and financial services.
• The AQEES had two components such as the “Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) and the Area Frame Establishment Survey (AFES) .
• The former relates to the establishments employing 10 or more workers whereas the later relates to the establishments employing 9 or less workers.
• The QES as a part of the AQEES was launched in April, 2021 to capture important information in terms of employment & related variables in the organized sector of the economy.
• The Report on quarterly employment survey being a demand side survey along with the supply side survey i.e. Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) will bridge the data gaps on employment in the country.
• The first survey showed employment at 3.08 crore in April-June (reference date for the first round was April 1, 2021).
• This compares with 2.37 crore in 2013-14, the base year chosen based on the sixth economic census (conducted by Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation).
• The stated objective of the QES is to enable the government to frame a “sound national policy on employment”.
• India ratified the International Labour Organization’s Employment Policy Convention, 1964, which requires the ratifying countries to implement “an active policy designed to promote full, productive and freely chosen employment.”
• India does not have one till now.

Conclusion:

As the Economic Survey 2015-16 puts it “To exploit its demographic dividend, India must create millions of “good- safe, productive, well-paying-jobs.”

Thus, ‘gainful employment’ matters much to achieve growth with equity and to successfully meet the challenge of the impending demographic dividend.