Business & Management Studies

Abstract

The paper seeks to establish a relationship between sector wise employment growth rate and GDP growth rate in the Indian economy. The devoir has been to find out whether employment has grown in the same rate as the GDP. To unearth it, there has been some digging done with tool of correlation analysis and multiple regressions, to entrench the desired relationship between employment and GDP growth, with the variables being growth rate of gross domestic product and sector wise employment growth rate.

From recent studies it has been discovered that India has a fairly stable growth path with the growth rate ranging from 7% to 10% from 2000 to 2016. However, since the same period the Indian economy reportedly clocked less than even 1% of growth in employment with the labour force participation rate being 52.135% in 2016. The employment-unemployment data released by Labor Bureau (EUS 2015) has put the unemployment rate at 5%. Independent estimates also suggested that 2013-2015 period saw the total employment shrinking by 70 lakhs heralding a new ‘jobless growth’ under the NDA government.

Our studies reveal that even though there has been economic growth in the Indian economy, this growth has not been accompanied by corresponding rise in employment. In a major sector like railways the Pearson correlation coefficient is negative, indicating that there has been a steady decline in employment as the economy grew. Even though the Plantation and private-owned factories show moderately positive correlation coefficient value till 2009, the total number of jobs created in recent days remain deplorably low and far below the required level (8.1 million per year estimated by the World Bank).