JOBS AND EMPLOYMENT – TWO DIFFERENT THINGS

 

Jobs (Naukri) and employment (Rozgar) are two different things.  While both are means of earning a livelihood the former is formal, structured and guaranteed the latter is informal, unstructured and casual. "Job" and "employment" are related terms, but they have different meanings:

 

1.      Job: A job refers to a specific position or task that a person performs for a specific period of time, often in exchange for payment. It is a specific role or position within an organization or in a particular field. For example, being a software engineer, a teacher, a doctor, or a cashier are all examples of jobs.

2.      Employment: Employment is a broader term that refers to the state of having paid work. It encompasses the relationship between an employer and an employee, where the employer provides work to the employee in exchange for compensation. Employment can involve one or more jobs over time.

 

In essence, a job is a specific task or position that a person performs, while employment refers to the overall state of being engaged in paid work. A person can have multiple jobs within the context of their employment, especially if they work part-time or have multiple sources of income.

 

Sectors of the Economy

Based on the engagement of workers in different kinds of employment, the economy can be broadly divided into three sectors:

• Primary: Constitutes agriculture and allied activities. The Primary sector continues to employ the maximum number of workers in our country, even though the number has dropped over the years.
• Secondary: Mainly includes the manufacturing activities, along with electricity, gas, water supply, and construction. Workers have shifted from agriculture to other forms of productive activity. This is also followed by rural to urban migration. A country’s transformation in employment from agriculture to secondary and tertiary sectors is called structural transformation.
• Tertiary: Comprises the service sector i.e. transport and communication, banking, insurance, trade, storage, etc.

 

Growth but no jobs

Having a job means to have consistent work and consistent remuneration. These jobs are not being created in India in the numbers that are required. Despite ten years of reasonably good fiscal management, frantic building of public infrastructure, digital revolution in enhancing productivity, and adding government revenues there are no records to show that newer jobs have been created. Is that even possible? Who are the people building the roads, digging the water bodies, taking electricity and water connection to every village homes? Yes, people are being employed to do these jobs, but these are informal, casual and tenured contracts. So yes, these people are employed, but strictly speaking, they don’t have formal jobs. So, ILO's India Employment Report says that unemployment is at all time high and more than 80% of India's unemployed are youth. So that fabled 'demographic dividend' is fast turning into a demographic nightmare! The fact that our female labour force participation is worse than that of Nepal and Bangladesh is also not helping the job statistics. 

 

Undoubtedly we are the 5th largest economy in the world, but that is by the virtue of our population. There are so many working hands and so naturally so much work is being done, but because these many hands are not performing to their maximum capability, and to the best of their ability, because of lack of matching numbers of opportunities, underemployment is rampant, and individual Indians remain poor. That is why, though we are the 5th largest economy, India still remains a poor country. With per capita income of $2,730, we rank 136th in the world and are the poorest among G 20 and BRICS nations.

 

The National Sample Survey of Periodic Labour Force

The National Sample Survey Office released the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) for 2022-23. The annual survey is the widest one to gauge the state of employment in the country. The latest survey covered 101,655 households with 419,512 people. After the pandemic years, this is the first survey that can be considered representative of a normal situation. Its findings, thus, carry more weight.

According to the survey, unemployment has decreased in the country: From 5.3 per cent in rural areas in 2017-18 to 2.4 per cent in 2022-23, and from 7.7 per cent in urban areas in 2017-18 to 5.4 per cent in 2022-23. To begin with, the survey findings reiterate one fact very starkly: That the overall employment character of the country remains unchanged; that it is dominated by the informal sector; and that agriculture still is the prime employer. Employment in agriculture has, in fact, increased: From 41 per cent in 2018-19 to 43 per cent in 2022-23.

The survey also tells that casual employment is still the dominant source of livelihood in the country and formalization of the employment sector remains a distant objective. The workforce is scrambling to the agricultural sector for employment. But, does the agriculture sector have the capacity to absorb more people? Certainly not; and that is why we have a crisis of livelihood on our hands.

However, the decrease in unemployment rate points to more and more people being able to get employment. And this is self employment. Share of self-employed persons in the total employed population of the country is increasing, from 52 % in 2018-2019 to 57 % in 2022-2023. One is considered self-employed if he or she works with his or her own set up, or employs people for own ventures. A high level of self-employment is an indicator that there are no other alternatives; the people, therefore, stick to these non-rewarding jobs. That is what is happening in India, when the economy is growing, but failing to create jobs.

 

A change in employment pattern

Structured jobs are not being created either by the government or by the private sector. A hospital once had 100 safai karmacharis on their regular Employment roll. Today they sublet the sanitation job to a third party, a sanitation thekedar, who in turn employs 80 casual employees to do the work of 100 and pay them perhaps the amount that the hospital would have paid 60 employees. These casual employees are not only underpaid but have no employment and health benefits! This is happening in every sector.

Governments much acclaimed Agnipath yojna for recruiting jawans for the military is another example. The establishment faces a huge post retirement benefits bill and now wants to cut cost. There are 46,000 posts with salary of Rs. 30,000 to 40,000 per month but for only 4 years. Then 25% of them will get permanent commission and continue with the Armed Forces and the remaining 75% will get a one time retirement benefit and a quota for jobs in  CRPF, Railway Protection Force, GRP, CISF, BSF, Customs & Central Excise, Forest Departments, ONGC,  IOCL, HPCL, Indian Railways, State Police, Traffic Police, SAIL etc. Even private companies like Tata, Indigo, Banks, Wipro, Mahindra etc have assured them jobs on preferential basis. So, the Army remains young and the responsibility of their retirement fund is picked up by their subsequent employer.

The government’s development model has changed from the Nehruvian socialist model to a thriving capitalist model and job security was the first casualty and formal office/factory job itself was the next casualty.

Are the casual self employed always struggling?

People may not have formal jobs but there is no dearth of casual, low paid and health and employment benefit less employment opportunities. Thus, selling chai, pakoras and samosas, driving autos, running a motor garage, freelancing as plumbers, electricians, AC mechanics, gardeners and event planners are all honourable jobs with reasonably good income tax free earnings, often more than government jobs, but it lacks the social standing and acceptance of the society.

There is another way of looking at jobs and employment, which cannot be ignored. Jobs are temporary. One simply cannot be dependent upon ‘Job’ all his life. No matter what you do for a company, your boss would always prefer profit and not you, when he/she has to make a choice. Add to this the turmoil which a job brings with transfers, postings, systemic changes and new boss. So, in today’s world, many are of the opinion that it is exceedingly important to take a risk and leap to self-employment after a certain period of time. Then, once you are settled in your own enterprise you can scale up or down depending of your will, your health, your requirements and your circumstances and the available opportunities. This is what the Start ups are doing, and they are the true pacemakers of tomorrow’s economy.

These self employment ventures may not be very glamorous with an air conditioned office, brass name plate, elite designation and a bunch of secretarial staff but if you have that mindset they are immensely satisfying and highly paying too. You may have to work hard but proportional returns are almost guaranteed. A lot many newer entrants to the job market, if they get a job with great difficulty, surprisingly do not consider it as their life’s goal – now achieved, but use it as a stepping stone for a brighter future in the sphere of self employment. The Gen –Z would tell you that they don’t want to get anchored to a place where they have to do slavery all their lives. Their motto is “A few years of experience in work and then Goodbye to slavery, and Hello to working our ass off to build our own dreams.” A job is their immediate necessity, business is their lifetime commitment.

 

Jobs are changing, but workforce is not

This is an issue that cannot be overemphasized. Rapid technological change has been destroying jobs faster than it is creating them, contributing to the stagnation of median income and the growth of inequality in the world today. So, what do we do? Do we stop technological advances for the sake of retaining jobs? Surely not. We need to learn newer skills, which will be in demand in the new world.

Computers have increasingly taken over such tasks as bookkeeping, clerical work, and repetitive production jobs in manufacturing—all of which typically provided middle-class pay. Technologies like the artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and improved analytics—all made possible by the ever increasing availability of cheap computing power and storage capacity—are automating many routine tasks. Countless traditional white-collar jobs, such as many in the post office and in customer service, have disappeared. Globalization has allowed industries in the developed world to shift their manufacturing units to the developing countries where labour is comparatively cheaper. This has resulted in drying out of their blue collared factory jobs. I wrote about the changing nature of the jobs in one of my previous blogs:

https://surajitbrainwaves.blogspot.com/2016/05/jobs-never-return-they-change.html

Good and responsive governments are expected to aid, assist and nurture this process and also help entrepreneurs create opportunities based on the new technologies. Only then will the number of jobs rebound. We need a holistic action plan that covers every base — one that includes a skilling and re-skilling programme to increase employability and productivity, incentives for smaller enterprises that absorb a greater number of workers, and the embedding of job generation in the massive infrastructure upgrade that India requires. Jobs must be the pivot for social and economic policy and key to the promised ‘Acche Din’!