India saw a 29% increase in employment across 9 sectors for Q2’21

The revamped quarterly employment survey (QES) showed a 29% rise in total employment in nine sectors, including IT, business process outsourcing (BPO) and manufacturing.

In the QES report, labour minister Bhupender Yadav said, “The most impressive growth of 152% has been recorded in the IT/BPO sector, while growth rates in health (sector) is 77%, in education it is 39%, in manufacturing it is 22%, in transport it is 68% and in construction it is 42%.”

In addition, the QES found that 88% of the estimated workers were permanent, while the remaining were either casual and contract workers, suggesting that hit by the COVID-19 disruption, establishments shed casual or contractual staff.

The nine sectors selected for the survey were manufacturing, trade, construction, education, transport, health, accommodation and restaurant, IT/BPO and financial services.

The total number of people employed in these nine sectors in the second quarter this year was 30.8 million. “Of the total employment estimated in the selected nine sectors, manufacturing accounts for nearly 41%, followed by education with 22%, and health 8%. Trade as well as IT/BPO each engaged 7% of the total estimated number of workers,” labour minister Yadav said in the survey.

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The QES comes nearly four years after it was discontinued and reports data from establishments employing at least 10 people. The latest QES has been criticised for using data over a nine-year period, giving an unrealistically high growth rate in jobs, according to Hindustan Times.