After many years of refusing to recognise there is a jobs crisis in India, the government of India, faced with relentless data to the contrary, has now resorted to misinformation. Scholars associated with the government have contributed to this effort. Two pieces - “Here’s why it’s V not K”, March 3, 2022 in The Times of India and “A hazy picture on employment in India”, February 1, 2022 in The Hindu are cases in point and are examined here. Regrettably, both pieces show an inadequacy in understanding the jobs situation.
As compared to the 8% per annum GDP growth in the period 2004-14, and 7.5 million new non-farm jobs created each year over 2005 to 2012 (NSO’s employment-unemployment survey), the number of new non-farm jobs generated between 2013-2019 was only 2.9 million, when at least 5 million were joining the labour force annually (NSO’s Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS)). The NSO itself states clearly that the two surveys provide comparable data; the claim that those two surveys are not comparable is not correct.
