The claims of "jobless growth" are further belied by the data from the government, which showed that employment in India rose by 36 per cent--an astonishing 17 million jobs--between 2016-17 and 2022-23.
During the period, the GDP had grown at an average of over 6.5 per cent.
According to the ministry of Labour and Employment, data from the employment series of the Reserve Bank of India's KLEMS database, that rely upon such surveys as the Employment and Unemployment Survey (EUS) and Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), maintains steady growth in employment since the 1980s.
India has witnessed huge growth in employment for the past decade. Economic curves of India support the growth in employment in prime sectors. India, with a robust democracy, a dynamic economy, and a culture of integrity-unity in diversity, is sowing the seeds for future growth towards the path of being a world power. The splendid journey continues to inspire the world, said the ministry.
The PLFS data of 2017 to 2023 also reveals that the WPR has increased by 9 percentage points or nearly 26 per cent in the period.
Thus, rhetoric of "joblessness" really doesn't hold water in crosscomparison of databases, the ministry said in a statement.
Moreover, it has been consumption-driven growth, which goes hand-in-glove with employment. An increase in consumption indicates that employment is being generated; otherwise, consumption would have fallen had employment mostly been in unpaid or very low wages.
The ministry considers "employment elasticity" a sensible measure to test the causal relationship between growth and employment generation in an economy.
The estimates, based on a linear econometric model, show that for the period 2017-23, there was a 1.11 per cent increase in jobs for a per cent increase in value added.
Also, the labour-capital ratio in the economy as a whole is around 1.11 and that for the services sector is 1.17.
Thus, the supply side argument that services cannot create jobs because they employ very few people is not supported by these statistics —one is rather the opposite. So on both sides of the supply- and demand-curves India's economic orientation does not factor in any joblessness," said the ministry.
India's economy performance in FY 2023-24 reports healthy growth.
It is estimated that real GDP has been around 8.2 per cent in FY 2023-24 compared with the growth of 7 per cent for FY 2022-23.
Nominal GDP has witnessed a growth rate of 9.6 per cent for FY 2023-24 while for FY 2022-23 it was 14.2 per cent in growth rate.
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