Sir,
It may be time to track job losses in the country alongside the routine study of job growth. The Government may disagree, the country’s job scene looks truly dismal, if not alarming. This is partly because of the dwindling economic growth and recessionary pressure on a number of industries. Industrial shake up, corporate mismanagement by greedy short-sighted entrepreneurs and the urgent need for implementing new technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, etc., are also contributing significantly to job losses. The global economic slowdown too is badly impacting the import-dependant Indian market with more foreign countries trying to push their India sales while Indian exports are shrinking. Imports adversely affect the local labour market. Falling exports contract it further. Companies in the sectors such as telecom, steel and non-ferrous metals, mining and quarrying, cement, engineering and transport, electronics and software, automobile, brown and white goods and banking among others, are chucking jobs. The so-called ‘voluntarily retirement’ in industry and banking is practically involuntary as surplus employees have little option.
Unfortunately, the organised sector of industry is witnessing massive job losses involving educated and technically qualified persons. This is a matter of big concern as new opportunities for such job losers are few and far between. There is no published study or data record of such job losses. India’s GDP has been on a declining mode for the last six consecutive quarters. India is the world’s sixth-largest manufacturer, representing three percent of global manufacturing output and employing over 57 million people. The break-up of the July-September GDP growth, this year, by NSO shows a negative growth of one percent in the manufacturing sector. This provides a vague idea of massive job losses in this sector during this period alone. It makes an official study of job losses as important as job growth in the economy.
Nantoo Banerjee
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