News: India’s regular jobs do not pay well: Periodic Labour Force Survey

Benefits & Rewards

India’s regular jobs do not pay well: Periodic Labour Force Survey

Concerns about the rising unemployment and lower wages in the salaried and regular jobs have risen out of the findings from the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2017-18.
India’s regular jobs do not pay well: Periodic Labour Force Survey

About 17.8 percent of the youth (15-29 years) are unemployed, according to the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2017-18. The challenging job scenario has been reflected with 6.1 percent of the entire country’s labour force reporting to be unemployed. 

The PLFS has raised concerns about the rising unemployment in the country and the job market conditions. Back in the years between 2011-12 and 2017-18, the proportion of the labour force busy in a regular wage or salaried jobs had increased by five percentage points. However, the overall workforce participation reduced by four percentage points during the same time period. As far as the regular workers were increased, the number has increased by eight percent. 

On the other hand, 53.1 percent of the total workforce in China is engaged in a salaried or regular job. India lags behind Brazil (67.7 percent) and South Africa (84.8 percent) in terms of moving a larger population of the country into the salaried or regular jobs sector. 

Why are regular/salaried jobs crucial? 

Being in a salaried or regular job enhances the chances of getting a better pay and job security. It is precisely why those individuals who were in a salaried or a regular job were found to have a higher median daily earnings as compared to their counterparts who were casually employed or were self-employed. 

At the same time, being in a salaried job does not translate directly into higher pay. About 45 percent of the regular employees earned less than Rs. 10,000 per year and about 12 percent even earned less than Rs. 5,000 a month, in 2017-18. Women in this group continue to lag behind their male counterparts. Moreover, the urban workforce earns more in salaries than those who live in rural areas. 

About three-fourths of regular workers end up making less than Rs. 20,000 a month. Low-income yielding occupations such as building caretakers, manual labour, garbage collectors form almost 15 percent of the total salaried and regular jobs workers. 

Job roles of regular workers 

While legislators, senior officials, and managers have the median monthly income of Rs. 28,000 there are other job roles that have a lower median monthly income such as technicians & associate professionals (Rs. 15,000), clerks (Rs. 15,000), plant and machine operators (Rs. 10,000) etc. 

As India is a country that is filled with a variety of skill sets, the pay scale also continues to vary. The working conditions for many of the jobs are not upto the mark and change is still far off.

Read full story

Topics: Benefits & Rewards, #Current

Did you find this story helpful?

Author

QUICK POLL

How do you envision AI transforming your work?