States with gender equality are doing better on new employment index

Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh lead Indian states on the quality and quantity of jobs they provide to their people.

High economic growth does not necessarily lead to better jobs, and states that do better on gender equality performed better on a new employment index.

Andhra Pradesh (including Telangana), Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh lead Indian states on the quality and quantity of jobs they provide to their people, while Bihar, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh (UP) are last, the index reveals.

“Good quality productive jobs that offer good wages are an impetus for sustainable economic growth,” Sabina Dewan, president and executive director at research organisation JustJobs Network, said at the launch of A Just Jobs Index for India, on June 21, 2019.

Supported by Azim Premji University in partnership with the Centre for Policy Research, a think tank, the Index tracks the performance of states by employment, formality, benefits, income equality, and gender equality, based on a set of equally weighted indicators.

Despite economic growth, the pace of job creation has been slow, the report said. The country faces rising unemployment with 71% of workers employed in the informal sector, and inconsistent job creation across states.

India’s unemployment rate was 6.1%--rural (5.3%) and urban (7.8%)--in 2017-18, according to the government’s Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), released on May 31, 2019.

Gujarat, which has “consistently maintained” net state value-added (NSVA) growth rates of 10% or higher during the period 2012-13 to 2016-17, did not do as well in creating quality jobs, ranking 18 on the index.

Andhra Pradesh and Telangana lead the pack, as we said, with 57.3 points, followed by Maharashtra (57.2) and Chhattisgarh (56.39), while UP (32.04) is below Bihar (37.28) and Odisha (37.70) at the bottom of the list.

For each indicator, the index uses a mean of the available values for the period 2010-2018, using data from various government sources, such as surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey Office, the Labour Bureau, the Annual Survey of Industries, the Reserve Bank of India and the PLFS.

Article Source BS

American experience suggests that an educated workforce may be overrated

This isn't to belittle the value of higher education; a tight labour market won't reduce the need for degrees for engineers or lawyers.

Business Standard : A tight labor market shows the true value of education – and we’re seeing now that college has been overpriced. For many workers, it’s not worth the time or the money.

In the depths of recession employers added years of experience and additional degrees into hiring requirements – "the barista with a master's degree" – not necessarily because that experience or education was important to do the job, but just because employers had the luxury of being more picky. As the labor market has improved, those requirements have been loosened, presumably without much impact to productivity.

This reality is at odds with the conventional wisdom for the rise in American economic inequality over the past few decades, which says that technology, globalization and education have segmented society into winners and losers depending upon whether someone is a manufacturing worker in the Midwest or a knowledge worker in a coastal city. That conventional wisdom argues that rising inequality has been for structural rather than cyclical reasons.

But as the past few years have shown, we're in an environment where employers are relaxing education requirements and those with the lowest wages (and presumably the least education) are getting the biggest raises. So maybe something has changed and now the link between education and inequality isn't as robust as it used to be, or maybe the theory wasn't right to begin with.

When unemployment was higher, it was plausible to think that more workers needed more education to earn more and to make the economy more productive. But years of very low unemployment have shown a different path, as millions of workers get that higher pay without having to spend years and tens of thousands of dollars on degrees that employers only "require" when they have leverage over workers.

This would be significant because education is one of the big four budget items – along with housing, health care and transportation – that are burdens for workers to pay for, and that policymakers have had difficulty addressing. To the extent the US could spend less on education, we could free up resources to tackle something else.

This isn't to belittle the value of higher education; a tight labor market won't reduce the need for degrees for engineers or lawyers. But as in other areas related to labor markets, maybe we've miscalculated how much is appropriate. Just as the Federal Reserve overestimated the level of the unemployment rate at which inflation becomes a concern, and deficit hawks have underestimated the level of the federal budget that's manageable without leading to higher inflation and interest rates, America may have overestimated how educated its workforce needs to be in order to thrive in a modern economy.

Rural unemployment: When jobs disappear, women are the first to lose out

The 'feminisation of agriculture' is 'not to be celebrated', because farm jobs keep women confined to 'low paid, insecure and oppressive labour relations'.

When Kamal Gangrude looks across at the fields beside her home on the valley floor, she sees swathes of farmland which this year will not be weeded, ploughed or planted. Sold to developers who will build factories and roads or generally put it to non-agricultural use, the loss of this farmland has also meant a loss of vital labouring jobs for the Dalit families of Pimplad, a village in Nashik district of Maharashtra.

Keep Reading : Business Standard

Previously when the monsoon rains arrived, villagers like Gangrude were assured of at least two months of work, earning between Rs 200-250 per day in the nearby rice fields. Now the work available has decreased and is more irregular. “The population is growing but the number of jobs is reducing each year,” Gangrude told IndiaSpend one hot March morning. “Last year some people got just three weeks of work in the whole season. With more machinery around too, the work is done faster.”

Gangrude’s husband is one of the lucky ones. A few years ago, he found a non-farming job as a tailor in the neighbouring town and earned Rs 6,000 last Diwali. But others, especially the village’s women, are often left jobless outside of the monsoon--the two-month period when the only farming work of the year is available. “After the plastic ban, an NGO came to the next village and taught the women how to sew cloth bags, petticoats and such things,” Gangudre said. “I would have liked to learn too but they didn't come here; I don’t know how else you can find this kind of work.”

Kamal Gangrude, 35, with her son in Pimplad village of Maharashtra's northwestern Nashik district. In the backdrop are the fields that used to provide a steady supply of farm jobs, but have now been sold to developers, thus restricting employment options for the village’s poor.

Like the villagers of Pimplad, an increasing number of women in Indian villages are being left with little employment options, except low-paid and erratic farm work. The number of female agricultural labourers in India increased by 24% between 2001 and 2011, even as 7.7 million farmers left farming, indicating how any limited, non-farming opportunities are increasingly being taken up by men, who are perceived as higher-skilled, better educated and more able to migrate for work.

This ‘feminisation of agriculture’ is “not to be celebrated”, said Ishita Mehrotra, assistant professor at Ambedkar University, Delhi, because farm jobs keep women confined to “low paid, insecure and oppressive labour relations”. Agricultural work is indicative of “a patriarchal ideology and a socio-cultural value system” that keeps women bound to the village and consumed with domestic work, while gender roles allow men to migrate for economic and social reasons, she said.

Seeking a job? Amazon has 1,300 openings in India, highest in Asia-Pacific

Amazon's job openings in India are way ahead of those in China, Japan and Singapore.

The recently announced changes in regulations for e-commerce firms with foreign investment may have sent Amazon into a tizzy, but it certainly did not stop the e-commerce giant from stepping up its hiring efforts in the country.

With 1,300 job openings in India, Amazon has the highest number of listings for Asia-pacific region on its website, reported The Times of India.

This is way ahead than China (467 job openings), Japan (381) and Singapore (174). Barring the United States, only Germany has as many openings as India.

ALSO READ: In Bezos split, a question about who gets the couple's Amazon.com stock?

Most of the hiring is expected to be in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai.

It is not yet clear whether the openings are only for Amazon.com or also for Amazon Prime video, its voice assistant Alexa and the firm's other horizons as well.

The government's move to tighten norms has hit Amazon and Flipkart the hardest as the new regulations bar online marketplaces with foreign investment to sell products of companies where they hold stakes as well as ban exclusive marketing arrangements.

Industry sources say Amazon could be employing more people in India to push its case in the ongoing policy discussion with the Centre.

Amazon had said it has "always operated in compliance with the laws of the land" and is evaluating the new guidelines "to engage as necessary with the government to gain clarity".

According to the current policy, 100 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) is permitted in marketplace e-commerce activities. It is prohibited in an inventory-based model.

Business Standard