Job Polarisation in India: Structural Causes and Policy Implications

Francis Kuriakose and Deepa Kylasam Iyer

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Automation impacts employment and wage levels at the micro-level, and the structure of employment-shift at the macro-level. Job polarisation is defined as the automation of ‘middle-skill’ jobs that require routine cognitive and manual applications while high and low-skill occupations are preserved. This paper examines the nature of job polarisation in India during the period 1983-2012 when Indian manufacturing was being gradually automated. The research uses disaggregated data from National Sample Survey Office and examines supply-side factors such as nature of employment growth in manufacture and presence of educated labour force which have not been adequately analysed before. The study has three observations. First, only the increased demand for high-skilled workers in the formal sector is due to skill-bias of technology conforming to theoretical expectation. Second, the transition of agricultural labourers has been to low-skill manufacturing sectors such as construction and textiles signalling distress in traditional manufacturing to provide employment. Third, over-supply of secondary and tertiary educated labour force has squeezed out middle-skilled workers from middle-skill jobs to relatively low-skill manufacturing and service occupations, explaining the persistence of routine occupations. The study concludes that increased demand for high and low-skill jobs has co-existed with the persistence of middle-skill jobs in India.

Keywords: Automation; Job Polarisation; Supply-Side Factors; Manufacturing; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J2 J23 J24 J3 J31 J4 J48 O3 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-12-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/96802/1/MPRA_paper_96802.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Job Polarisation in India: Structural Causes and Policy Implications (2020)
Journal Article: Job Polarisation in India: Structural Causes and Policy Implications
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:pra:mprapa:96802

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter (winter@lmu.de).