According to the latest data released by the Reserve Bank of India, the Indian economy added 46.6 million new jobs in fiscal 2023-24. The surge propelled total employment figures that were at 596.7 million in 2022-23 to 643.3 million as of March 31, 2024. Job creation has more than doubled lately from a pace that systemically created 20 million jobs on average between 2017-18 and 2021-22.
The KLEMS database of the RBI on inputs to production—Capital, Labour, Energy, Materials, and Services—cuts across 27 industries, classified into six sectors. All in all, they offer a pretty good view of the economy. For the first time, overall productivity for FY24 has also been provisionally estimated by RBI, based on available data, with improvements in labor quality being driven by educational attainments of workers.
It has increased significantly at all levels of education across different age groups, accompanied by a fall in the rate of unemployment to 1.4 percent in FY24 from 2.2 percent in FY18. One of the interesting features is that the services sector excluding construction has now emerged as the biggest absorber of workforce out-migrating from agriculture. That is certainly at variance with the earlier trend when construction dominated the scene in job creation between 2000 and 2011.
Moreover, whereas high-skilled sectors have risen with financial services, business services, education, and health, this is an indication of increased employment of educated workers under these sectors.
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