50% Manufacturing Jobs Were Killed In Last 5 Years: Failure Of Make In India Vision?

A new report has shed some light on the ongoing situation of employment in India, and there has been a drastic impact on the manufacturing employment in the country.

The manufacturing sector makes up for 17% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). 

Does this reflect on the Make In India movement in India?

Employment in Manufacturing Sector Sees Sharp Decline In 2020-21

This report is an analysis by the Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA) and it is based on the CMIE monthly time-series of employment by industry. The report states that the manufacturing employment in 2020-21 has been reduced to nearly half of what it was five years ago.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown has affected the employment scenario in India; a lot of people lost their jobs across all sectors.

As per the report, the decline has been sharper in 2020-21, especially due to the pandemic. While the situation was a bit better in May 2020, the manufacturing sector has seen the worst decline as compared to the other sectors, especially agriculture as a job creator over the past few years.

Considering the year on year basis, the manufacturing sector in India has employed 32% fewer people in the current year, 2020-2021 as compared to 2019-20. The sector employed 51 million people in 2016-17 and declined by 46% to reach 27.3 million in 2020-21. 

People Moving Towards Agriculture For Employment?

Real estate and construction has also recorded a major decline; the sector employed 69 million people in 2016-17, the rate was down to only 53.7 million in 2020-21. 

As per the report, there has been a secular decline in the manufacturing employment across all sub-sectors, with the exception of chemical industries, all sub-sectors registered a longer-term decline.

The study has covered sectors such as agriculture, mines, manufacturing, real estate and construction, financial services, non-financial services, and public administrative services.

It has also stated that the agricultural sector has employed 151.8 million in 2020-21, but the sector employed 145.6 million people in 2016-17, clearly showing a great increase. There has been a steady increase in the employment in the agriculture sector in the last two years with a year on year growth rate of 1.7% in 2019-2020 and 4.1% in 2020-21. This shows that there has been a marginal shift from manufacturing, non-financial services, mining and real estate sectors to agriculture.