Manufacturing continues to be the largest institutional employer in the country, employing about 38.5% of the workers, according to the fourth round (January-March 2022) of the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES), which is a part of the All India Quarterly Establishment based Employment Survey (AQEES).
The survey, which was released by Union Labour Minister Bhupender Yadav here on Tuesday, estimated that around 3.18 crore workers were employed in about 5.31 lakh establishments between January and March. It claimed an increase of about four lakh workers compared with the third round of QES, which was done for the last three months of 2021.
Education, manufacturing, trade and financial services together accounted for 84% of the total estimated units.
“Manufacturing sector accounts for the largest percentage (38.5%) of the total number of workers, followed by education sector with 21.7%, IT/BPO sector with 12% and Health sector 10.6%,” the survey said. Almost 80% of the establishments engaged 10 to 99 workers. About 12% of the establishments reported fewer than 10 workers. Only 1.4% of the establishments surveyed reported at least 500 workers. “Such large establishments were mostly in the IT/ BPO sector and in the health sector,” the report said.
The participation of women workers witnessed a marginal increase from 31.6% in the third quarter to 31.8% in the fourth quarter report. However, women workers constituted about 52% of the workforce in the health sector, while the corresponding percentages in education, financial services and IT/ BPO sectors stood at 44%, 41% and 36%, respectively.
“It is noteworthy that in financial services, women far outnumber males among self-employed persons,” the report added.
The survey said 86.4% of the workers were regular employees, and 8.7% were contractual employees followed by casual employees (2.3%) and self-employed (2%). “The share of fixed term employees in the establishments was found to be the least (0.7%) over all,” the survey said.
Releasing the report, Mr. Yadav said employment was showing an increasing trend and estimated employment rose from 3.14 crore in the third quarter (September-December 2021) to 3.18 crore in the fourth quarter (January-March 2022). “It is important to mention here that the total employment in these nine selected sectors taken collectively was reported as 2.37 crore in the sixth economic census (2013-14),” he said.
The Labour Bureau had taken up AQEES to provide quarterly estimates about employment and related variables of establishments in both organised and unorganised segments of nine sectors — manufacturing, construction, trade, transport, education, health, accommodation and restaurant, IT / BPO and financial services.
Mr. Yadav said the AQEES had two components such as the “Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) and the Area Frame Establishment Survey (AFES) and simultaneously the Bureau was also studying about migrant and domestic workers too.
