According to a recent Finance Ministry report, ‘Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees for 2016-17’, about four lakh jobs are lying vacant in the Central Government as on 1st March 2016. The number of job positions in Central Government has come down from over six lakhs as on March 1, 2013, to 4.21 lakh as on March 1, 2014, but the number of job openings remained more or less at the same level in subsequent years as it was in 2014.

According to the same report, the total number of job vacancies as on March 2016, stood at 4, 12,752. The total number of vacant posts was 15,284 in group A; 26,310 in group B (gazetted); and 49,740 in group B (non-gazetted), and  3,21,418 vacancies in group C (non-gazetted). 

Niti Aayog’s CEO, Amitabh Kant, shared in media that there should be a robust framework to keep track of job creation in the country which can only be achieved through payroll reporting. He stressed on the need of capturing jobs on the real-time basis. 

He was mentioned saying, “98.6% enterprises are left out of Labour Board Bureau and do not capture new job creation. The government needs to look at the stock of payroll and look at incremental gains on jobs annually.”

He further added that the most significant challenge in India is low-paying jobs and low-productivity jobs, he said there is a need to identify these sectors through a proper instrument or procedure, as it will help the government to focus on those areas.