A new report titled "State of India's Livelihoods Report (SOIL)" has revealed that India's employment growth has been shrinking despite its GDP growth mostly staying in the range of 4-8% since 1980. 

The report, launched by ACCESS, also found that Indian workers are transitioning from agriculture at a slower pace than expected and are not moving to manufacturing on a large scale.

According to the report, which was launched by BB Swain, Secretary of the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Government of India, the majority of new jobs will be in large urban-industrial centres. The report also calls for better contractual arrangements in the industry to foster learning and progression in companies.

The report also highlights that India has 63 million MSMEs employing close to 110 million workers, but the vast majority of these firms are ‘micro’, investing less than 10 million. These companies have a turnover of less than 50 million and hire less than 20 workers. 

Another 32% of the micro sector are firms that have only two or three workers and companies with four workers or above (up to 19) comprise only 6-7% of all firms. However, due to constraints in terms of policy and opportunities, it is unable to unleash its employment potential.

The report suggests that micro sectors need to be seen as the main engine of employment and calls for efforts to overcome spatial imbalance between rural and urban areas as well as the role of labour-intensive trades in local and craft-based markets.

Dr. Orlanda Ruthven, one of the authors of the report, commented on the current employment ecosystem saying, "There is a widespread assumption that larger and ‘formal’ employers are better, from the viewpoint of entry-level workers seeking to learn on the job. This may have been the case when the only large firms in our midst were the public sector units and the blue-chip nation builders, but it is no longer the case. The proportion of casual- or TPA-hired workers in formal companies is growing. Which employers are fit to train youth is a question we need to ask and research."

The report also mentions the proliferation of technologies of employment in recent years and how digital applications used to manage personnel systems, survey performance, aggregate workers under TPAs for payroll and compliance purposes, and render them gig workers in digital marketplaces are never neutral, and strongly reflect the interests of their designers.