ILPC 2027

 The employment situation of a country always depends upon the economic changes initiated by it. The growing magnitude of population, urbanization, globalization, and technological changes currently present new problems all over the world with respect to employment. India is not an exception. Since India entered the global economy the secondary sector activity has declined considerably vis-à-vis many industries were closed and/or merged leaving behind a large number of employment loss.  

Objectives

The major objectives of the study are, first to study changing labour force participation over a period of time, before and after India’s entry into global economy. Secondly we compared the profile of the household members who lost the job due to industrial closure with that of other households.  

Data Source

The decennial Census and National Sample Survey Datasets are used in this study.

Methodology

Only the urban population are taken for this study since industrial closure happens mostly in urban areas. Comparison of the families of the persons who have lost their employment due to industrial closure and all the other families are explored. More focus is given to the age, level of education and the type of work the family members are involved are analysed more deeply.

Findings

Labour force participation of spouses and unmarried sons were high in the households where a person has lost the job due to industrial closure. Also these working wives were mostly involved in casual service sector employments. The proportion of unmarried children who are involved in employment are much higher compared to the other households.

Conclusion and Discussion

The changing gender specific labourforce participation in India highlights the decline in male employments and increase in  female employments. Exploring the background of families by grouping the households into normal and employment lost person’s household reveals a different scenario. The study proved added workers hypothesis - the children and spouse had to enter labourforce although they were not ready to do so. Early entry of these young which are used as buffers during this economic crisis affects their education which leads to educational drop-outs. Unless the government looks into this matter, there could be a big volume of unskilled manpower, which will create inter-generational social and economic impact. Often the quality of people’s lives is sacrificed for the goal of wealth creation. Human development should not be sacrificed in the name of economic growth but rather economic growth should be used as a tool to help people achieve a healthy, creative and dignified life.