[The grand betrayal: I/II. <<***Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised to create one crore new jobs every year*** (emphasis added), but three years after the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in a stunning victory, job creation is at an eight-year low. The Modi government has pushed several programs to catalyse employment opportunities including the 'Make in India' programme, but these initiatives are failing to create enough jobs for the millions of young Indians joining the workforce every year. Citing official data, The Telegraph reported today that ***1.55 lakh jobs were created in 2015 and 2.31 lakh in 2016, the lowest levels since the 10 lakh jobs created by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in 2009*** (emphasis added).>> (Source; 'Job Creation Under Modi Government Sinks To Its Lowest Point In Almost A Decade: Report' at < http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2017/05/18/job-creation-under-modi-government-is-at-its-lowest-in-almost-a_a_22096532/ >.)
II. <<Last year, job growth was only 1.1 percent as compared to the GDP growth of 7 percent. Also, underemployment is pegged at 35 percent of the labour force for more than fifteen years as per the Census 2011 figures. ***According to an ILO report, unemployment in India is projected to increase from 17.7 million last year to 17.8 million in 2017 and 18 million next year*** (emphasis added).>> (Source: 'Modi@3: Promise of 1 Crore Jobs Turns Out to be Another Jumla' at < https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/modi-government-3-years-unemployment >.)] I/III. https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/absolute-decline-in-jobs-says-new-epw-study-drop-sharpest-in-last-three-years/302513?utm_source=article_sharing 02 OCTOBER 2017 Last Updated at 6:11 PM BUSINESSNEWS ANALYSIS Absolute Decline In Jobs, Says New CDS Study, Drop Sharpest In Last Three Years According to the Labour Bureau’s Employment Unemployment Surveys, total employment in the country shrank by about 0.4 per cent annually between 2013-14 and 2015-16, a number which corresponds to 37.4 lakh people being unemployed. OUTLOOK WEB BUREAU There has been an absolute decline in employment – number of people with jobs – between 2013-14 and 2015-16, possibly for the first time since independence, a new study published in the EPW journal says. Three critical sources of jobs – construction, manufacturing and IT services – performed the worst, the paper by Vinoj Abraham of the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, said. The construction sector is India’s largest informal sector employer. The author combined data sources from three flagship labour market surveys– The Labour Bureau’s Employment Unemployment Surveys (LB-EUS) the Quarterly Quick Employment Surveys (QES) and the Revised QES– for recent periods to show that while there has been an absolute drop in the unorganized sector, in the organized sector, the rate of growth of employment has tanked. In a novel technique, the author uses both Labour Bureau’s Employment Unemployment Household Surveys and the Quarterly Employment Surveys of Enterprises to get “evidence” from both “supply and demand side”. While “demand side” is a term economist use to denote employers, supply side refers to job-seekers. According to the Labour Bureau’s Employment Unemployment Surveys, total employment in the country shrank by about 0.4 per cent annually between 2013-14 and 2015-16 (going by the usual principal status criterion for those 15 years and above), a number which corresponds to 37.4 lakh people being unemployed. Usual principal status denotes a person who has been unemployed relatively for a longer period of time. The study quotes the QES survey to state a “dismal picture of employment creation in India”. After the October quarter in 2011, in no quarter were more than 2 lakh people employed. According to labour ministry data, nearly 12 million Indians enter the workforce in India every year. In three of the 12 quarters during 2014 and 2016, the situation worsened due to an “absolute decline in employment”. The study states that the decline in job creation has been worst in the past three years. In the two years between March 2010 and March 2012, employment in the select sectors rose by 18.15 lakh, while in the next two years between March 2012 to March 2014, employment creation slowed down to just 6.2 lakh. In the following 19 months from March 2014 to December 2015, employment creation further slowed down to 5.92 lakh. Between March 2014 and December 2015, average monthly employment creation declined to 30,000 jobs. And between March–December 2015, the average employment creation fell to its worst levels: 8,000 jobs per month. “Perhaps this is for the first time in independent India that we have an absolute decline in employment,” Abraham writes. Abraham also takes into account the organised and unorganized sectors. He says that the picture which emerges is one “of an absolute decline of employment in India, with much of it probably in the unorganised sector, while the organised sector is seeing a sharp decline in the growth of employment.” Abraham says India’s labour market is facing a “crisis” with the employment rate stagnating across almost all sectors. Indicators have worsened since mid-2014 and the “weakest among the working class are bearing the brunt of the employment decline,” the study said. II/III. http://www.epw.in/journal/2017/38/commentary/stagnant-employment-growth.html Stagnant Employment Growth Last Three Years May Have Been the Worst Vinoj Abraham ([email protected]) teaches economics at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram. Employment growth in India slowed down drastically during the period 2012 to 2016, after a marginal improvement between March 2010 and March 2012, according to the latest available employment data collected by the Labour Bureau. There was an absolute decline in employment during the period 2013–14 to 2015–16, perhaps happening for the first time in independent India. The construction, manufacturing and information technology/business process outsourcing sectors fared the worst over this period. Snipped III. http://indianexpress.com/article/business/economy/from-textiles-to-tech-wave-of-job-losses-hits-new-and-old-economy-4871829/ >From textiles to I-T: Wave of job losses hits new and old economy The Indian Express points to spreading employment distress in a market where fresh hiring opportunities are increasingly limited. Written by Anil Sasi | New Delhi | Updated: October 3, 2017 7:26 am This job distress comes when three of the key drivers of the economy — private investment, private consumption and exports — are not firing, with largely government spend driving growth. Textile to capital goods, banking to I-T, start-ups to energy, the economy’s downward spiral is leaving a trail of job losses across both old and new economy sectors. In the near absence of consolidated employment numbers, disaggregated data collated from across these sectors by The Indian Express points to spreading employment distress in a market where fresh hiring opportunities are increasingly limited. Consider: * In the textiles sector, in the last three financial years, 67 units are reported to have closed down across the country, impacting over 17,600 workers — this is as per official Union Textile Ministry data restricted to just the organised segment of the cotton and man-made fibre textile mills. This excludes the small scale industries (SSI) section of the textile value chain where shutdowns and job losses are reported to be far higher. * Capital goods major major Larsen & Toubro (L&T) laid off about 14,000 employees across businesses during the first two quarters of the fiscal ended March 31, 2017, terming it a “strategic decision.” * During the first quarter of this fiscal, three of the five biggest IT companies that together employed 878,913 people at the end of the June quarter, saw their workforce shrink by over 1800 people. TCS saw its workforce decline by 1,414 people, Infosys Ltd saw a net decline of 1,811 while Tech Mahindra Ltd, reported that its workforce shrunk by 1,713 people. The numbers would have been worse but for Wipro Ltd and HCL Technologies Ltd which reported net additions to their workforce. * HDFC Bank’s total employee headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period – from 90,421 to 84,325. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount was down by 4,581. Other private sector banks are also reported to be cutting down on staff strength. * Job losses have hit the renewable energy sector, one of the big thrust areas of the government. Wind gear supplier Suzlon Energy Ltd and turbine maker ReGen Powertech are learnt to have retrenched well over 1,500 employees over the last six months, while equipment maker Inox Wind Ltd has not paid salaries to sections of its staff over the last two months. * A total of 212 start-ups shut shop in 2016, 50 per cent higher than in the previous year, according to data analytics firm Tracxn. The big casualties in 2016 included PepperTap and TinyOwl. This year has seen more shutdowns, including ventures such as Stayzilla and Taskbob. This job distress comes when three of the key drivers of the economy — private investment, private consumption and exports — are not firing, with largely government spend driving growth. The textiles and apparel sector, where exports account for about 40 per cent of production, is down due to a combination of external factors and the impact of subdued domestic demand, alongside structural issues such as lack of economies of scale, labour woes and high overheads including electricity. Demonetisation and the transition to GST has hit smaller players hard. The number of workers affected due to closure of cotton and man-made fibre textile units (the bigger units that comprise the non-SSI segment of the industry) during 2016-17 were 4,356 on account of the closure of 18 units, according to official Textile Ministry data on non-SSI units. During the previous two years, the numbers were 7,938 workers affected by the closure of 27 units in 2015-16 and 5,384 workers affected from the closure of 21 units in 2014-15, taking the cumulative figure to over 17,600 workers impacted by the closure of 67 units in the last three years. “Most of these (shut units) are in the powerloom sector. The non-SSI unit shutdown figures for the past three years is broadly in line with some of the previous years,” a senior Ministry official said. Details of closure of textile units in the decentralized sectors — powerloom etc — are not compiled and therefore were not available, he said. Another official said the Textile Ministry has been implementing the Textile Workers Rehabilitation Fund Scheme (TWRFS) and under this, interim relief is provided to textile workers rendered unemployed because of closure of private non-SSI mills. “It has been decided to merge this scheme with Rajiv Gandhi Shramik Kalyan Yojana with effect from April 1, 2017”. What is disconcerting is the level of distress in the small and medium scale segment of the textile and garments industry which official government data does not capture. On exports, India’s flat garment export performance in its single biggest market — the US — has not helped matters. India’s apparel exports to the US from January-July 2017 were up just 0.21 per cent at $2.33 billion as against an over 6 per cent jump reported by Vietnam which exported garments worth nearly three times India’s exports at $6.52 billion during the period. The GST rollout has further hit SME players in textile hubs such as Surat, Bhiwadi and Ichalkaranji. According to Tarachand Kasat, president of the GST Sangharsh Samiti in Surat, units in the filament yarn and man-made fibre product business in Surat are losing around Rs 1.25 crore a day since the July GST rollout. Capital goods firms are struggling as most of the downstream sectors are saddled with excess capacity and low demand. L&T’s chief financial officer R Shankar Raman said that the company had taken a strategic decision to resize a business that was not doing well. “If there is time to get the business back to normality, it is important to reduce under-recoveries. So the jobs that we are finding redundant, we are allowing people to move on,” Raman said. Most of the layoffs were reportedly in the company’s financial services business and the minerals and metals segment even though the company did not offer an official comment on the segments where people were let go. HDFC Bank signalled that falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of…what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar said in Mumbai on April 21. The worrying aspect, though, is on two counts: sectors such as financial services and IT/BPO, which have led the limited buoyancy in the labour bureau’s quarterly establishment surveys, are laying off people on a mass scale and new economy sectors that are the thrust areas of the NDA Government, including renewable energy and start-ups, are also facing a downward slide. On the IT sector lay-offs, industry lobby group National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) said there is no information on number of tech sector workers who have lost their jobs but said the IT-ITeS industry is estimated to directly employ nearly 39 lakh people, an addition of around 175,000 people over the year FY 2016-17. The renewable sector is seeing a wave of lay-offs. Asked about its layoffs, Suzlon did not offer a formal response but a company executive said that “a manpower cost optimisation” exercise is on. ReGen Powertech, which retrenched at least 300 people from a factory it closed down in Rajasthan, is reportedly still in the process of laying off staff across units, sources said. ReGen’s official response to queries sent by The Indian Express played down the layoffs. “We have laid off nearly 200 people in the company… The initiative of optimising the overheads has been taken by almost all wind-turbine manufacturers including Regen Powertech,” said Madhusudan Khemka, managing director Regen Powertech, in response to a query by The Indian Express. Noida-based Inox Wind, which has not paid salaries to most employees over the last two months, did not respond to emails seeking comment. Inox Wind manufactures nacelles and hubs at a plant located in Una in Himachal Pradesh and rotor blades at facilities and tower plants in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. LAYOFFS AND SHUTDOWNS * 67 textile units shut down between FY’15 and FY’17, impacting over 17,600 staff * L&T laid off 14,000 staff in first 2 quarters FY’17. HDFC Bank’s net jobs losses for FY’17: 3,230 * During Q1 of FY’18, TCS workforce down by 1,414; Infosys by 1,811; Tech Mahindra by 1,713 * Suzlon Energy Ltd, ReGen retrenched 1,500 over last 6 months * 212 startups wind up operations in 2016 -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
