Structure and growth of employment: evidence from India KLEMS data

Suresh Aggarwal and Bishwanath Goldar

Indian Growth and Development Review, 2019, vol. 12, issue 2, 202-228

Abstract: Purpose - This study aims to analyze the structure and trend in employment in the Indian economy between 1980-8081 and 2015-2016. Design/methodology/approach - Use of India KLEMS data set. Estimate growth rate of employment and discuss employment prospects using “Point” employment elasticity. Findings - Whilst India’s GDP growth rate has been quite impressive since the reforms of 1991, the rate of employment growth, especially in the recent period of 2003-2015, has been quite slow (1 per cent) with low employment elasticity (0.1). The pattern of employment growth has also been imbalanced with slow rate of employment growth in manufacturing and rapid growth rate in the construction sector. India now also has low labour force participation rate and a large share of informal employment in the economy. Research limitations/implications - The limitation is the lack of reliable data on employment for the recent period. Practical implications - With overall low employment elasticity, India would have to explore sectors where more employment opportunities could be created. Social implications - India has to create not only more jobs but also “good” jobs. Originality/value - The India KLEMS data provide a time series for employment, which has been used in this paper to find “Point” elasticity instead of arc elasticity of employment and is an improvement over existing employment elasticity estimates.

Keywords: Technology; Manufacturing; Trade; Employment growth; Demographic dividend; Employment elasticity; J21; J23; J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:igdrpp:igdr-10-2018-0103

DOI: 10.1108/IGDR-10-2018-0103

Access Statistics for this article

Indian Growth and Development Review is currently edited by Professor Chetan Ghate, Professor Prabal Chowdhury and Professor Prabal Chowdhury

More articles in Indian Growth and Development Review from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().