New Delhi: The dark phase of Covid-19 that created massive drop in employment across industries seems to be vanishing, if figures of Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) released on April 28, 2022 are to be believed. 

The key indicators of green shoots are that during October-December 2021, 400,000 jobs were created in nine key sectors including trade, manufacturing and IT.

The data was captured from more than 10,800 companies.

Much hue and cry have raised over diminishing jobs in India. While the white-collar employment market is seeing rise in demand, the larger labour market in India is still stressed.

“The estimated total employment in the nine select sectors came in at 3.14 crore which is 4 lakh higher than the estimate for September 2021 quarter,” the labour and employment ministry said.

When the first QES report was published for Q1 of FY22, 3.08 crore people were employed in these nine sectors. 
Other than trade, manufacturing, and IT/BPO, other sectors considered were financial services, education, health, construction, transport and accommodation and restaurant.

Of the total jobs in the selected nine sectors, manufacturing generated nearly 39 percent, followed by education 22 percent, IT/BPOs 11 percent, and health 10 percent. Trade and transport accounted for 5.3 percent and 4.2 percent of the total estimated workers respectively.

Employment break-up 

Data analysis reflected that regular workers accounted for 85 percent of the estimated workforce in the nine selected sectors and rest were contractual and casual workers.

In construction, 21 percent of the workers were contractual and 6.2 percent were casual workers.

Most establishments (97.9 percent) were located outside households, although 5.5 percent of units in accommodation and restaurants sector were found to operate from within households.

Data also showed that 25.4 percent of all establishments were registered under the Companies Act. This was as high as 84 percent in IT/BPOs, 53.1 percent in construction, 42.5 percent in manufacturing, 40.9 percent in the transport, 34.4 percent in trade and 30.2 percent in financial services.

Of the total firms surveyed, 58.6 percent were registered under the Goods and Service Tax Act.