May the Covid-19 pandemic have left long-term scars on India’s labour markets? The findings of the January-March spherical of the Periodic Labour Drive Survey (PLFS), launched on November 30, by the Nationwide Statistical Workplace (NSO), gives some solutions. The quarterly spherical of PLFS information reveals that pandemic’s opposed impact, a minimum of in city labour markets—quarterly rounds of PLFS solely have a look at city areas—might be extra qualitative than quantitative in nature.
That is borne out by the truth that whereas the unemployment charge fell within the January-March spherical, the share of salaried jobs really fell to its lowest since June 2018, the earliest interval for which this information is out there. The PLFS numbers additionally present that there’s a gender bias within the employment restoration story within the post-pandemic part, with girls discovering it harder to seek out jobs than males.
The headline unemployment charge within the March 2021 quarter was 9.4%. That is the bottom for the reason that quarter ending June 2020, which coincided with the 68-day lengthy nation-wide lockdown which was imposed on March 25, 2020. What’s heartening is the truth that this decline in unemployment charge has been accompanied by a normalisation within the labour power participation charge (LPFR). LPFR is the share of inhabitants which is both working or searching for a job.
To make certain, the restoration in each unemployment charges and LPFR has a male bias, which means that the pandemic has made India’s labour markets much more unfavourable for girls.
Availability of jobs is, nonetheless, not the whole image of the city labour market (see chart 1). At 48.1%, the share of normal or salaried employees—the perfect paid amongst totally different sorts of employees—was the bottom within the March quarter for the reason that quarter ending March 2018. This development was true for each women and men. The autumn in share of salaried employees was accompanied by a rise within the share of self-employed and informal employees.
The newest PLFS numbers additionally counsel that the pandemic’s ache has begun to indicate within the service sector (see chart 2).
A broad-based classification throughout the first, secondary and tertiary sectors—they largely seize agriculture, trade and companies—means that even because the employment share of main and secondary sector elevated between the quarters ending March 2020 and March 2021, the tertiary sector really noticed a decline of 1 share level throughout this era.