New DelhiThere is much to mourn in India’s post-Covid job market, where recovery has been painfully slow. However, government data shows that when it comes to the salaried sector, the participation of religious minorities – Muslims, Sikhs and Christians in that order – has been most severely affected.
Latest from Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation Periodic Labor Force Survey (PLFS) – covering the period from July 2020 to June 2021 and issued earlier this year – reflect at least partly the impact of the lockdown, and the impact on salaried jobs in sectors immediately following them .
Survey Defines “regular/salaried employees” as “persons who work in the farm or non-farm enterprises (both domestic and non-domestic) of others” and in return, receive salary or wages on a regular basis. (i.e. daily or periodic renewal of works contracts on no basis). This category includes both full-time and part-time paid apprentices.
According to the data, during 2020-21, the share of India’s salaried class in the workforce declined by about 2 percentage points. In 2019-20, around 23 per cent of the employees earned regular salary or salary, but in 2020-21 only 21 per cent did.
But the old data is instructive to get a better idea of the impact of the lockdown.
Since the survey is conducted every year between July and June, the 2019-20 survey includes values for the April-June 2020 quarter, when the most severe lockdown was in force.
In the previous year, the share of the salaried class in India’s labor force actually increased by one percentage point from 22.8 in 2017-18 to 23.8 in 2018-19. So, if we take all these figures into account, it can be estimated that India’s salaried class has shrunk by 2.7 percentage points during the years when the economy was battling the pandemic.
However, a closer look at the figures shows that some religious minorities were disproportionately impacted, with the majority being Muslims.
When gender is included, the picture becomes even bleaker, with data indicating that women’s participation in the salaried sector has seen significant declines across religions.
“India’s marginalized communities are vulnerable to uncertainties – the pandemic has proved it,” Archana Prasad, professor at the Center for Informal Sector and Labor Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, told ThePrint.
“Only those who had the opportunity to work from home and who had internet and other facilities survived the job crash of the pandemic. As a result, [people belonging to] Marginalized communities were automatically kicked out of the formal sector and forced to seek work elsewhere to survive,” she said, adding that “discrimination” was also possible as a factor.
Further, Prasad is also of the view that the PLFS numbers misrepresent the actual employment scenario as the definition of “salaried class” includes jobs that provide social security (pension / provident fund), paid leave or provide a written contract. Many jobs that count as “salaried”, he argued, could fall under the informal sector, which employs the most vulnerable sections of society.
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Muslims, women most affected
According to the survey, the share of Muslims earning regular wages fell from 22.1 per cent in 2018-19 to 17.5 per cent in 2020-21 – a drop of almost 5 percentage points. This means that out of every 100 Muslims who were working, there were now less than five who were doing regular paying jobs.
In the same period, the share of Sikhs working in the salaried sector declined by 4.5 percentage points from 28.5 per cent in 2018-19 to 24 per cent in 2020-21. For Christians, the decline was 3.2 percentage points, from 31.2 percent to 28 percent.
Compared to these minorities, Hindu workers in salaried jobs performed relatively better, with their share declining ‘only’ 2.3 per cent from 23.7 in 2018-19 to 21.4 in 2020-21.
But the declining participation in the salaried sector is highest among women, cutting across communities.
On an average, the share of males in the salaried segment has declined by about 1.7 percentage points (24.4 per cent in 2018-19 to 22.7 per cent in 2020-21), but the share of females has declined significantly by 4.5 percentage points (21.9 per cent). from 17.4 percent).
This trend was evident even among religious minorities.
The decline in the share of salaried Sikh men fell by 2.7 percentage points (from 26.8 percent in 2018-19 to 24.1 percent in 2020-21), but it was 12 percentage points (from 35.6 percent to 23.7 percent) for women. ,
Among Muslims, the share of paid men fell by 4 percentage points (from 22.4 percent to 18.4 percent), but for women, it was 8 percentage points (20.5 percent to 12.5 percent).
For Christians, the salaried class shrank by 1.7 percentage points for men (27 percent from 28.7 percent) and by 6.2 percentage points for women (36.1 percent from 29.9 percent).
In 2018-19, around 21.3 per cent of Hindu women surveyed had a salary/salary job, which fell by four percentage points to 17.3 per cent by 2020-21. Hindu men, on the other hand, saw a decline of only 1.3 percent over the same period, from 24.5 percent to 23.2 percent.
Where did all the salaried workers go?
Many of those who have left their jobs or have no choice but to leave have become self-employed in their own enterprises or as “helpers in domestic enterprises”, the report said.
In 2018-19, around 52.1 per cent of employed Indians were self-employed, and the share of this category of workers had increased to 55.6 per cent by 2020-21.
However, it should be noted that the term “self-employment” here does not mean entrepreneurship. Much of the gain in this sector is down to the greater number of “helpers”, defined in the survey as those who work for a domestic enterprise but are not necessarily paid wages (eg. , a son helps his father run his shop).
In 2018-19, the share of “self-employed workers” (self-employed employees who do not hire paid employees) was 38.8 per cent of the employed workforce, falling slightly to 38.2 per cent by 2020-21 Done. However, the helpers category accounted for 17.3 per cent of the workforce in 2020-21, up from only 13.3 per cent in 2018-19.
What experts say about employment of Muslims
The shrinking of the salaried class among Muslims was greatest among religious communities. While it’s hard to tell why, some experts speculate that it could be due to Muslims already facing the first cuts in the post-stressed pandemic market.
In an article for ThePrint in April 2020, Asim Ali, a researcher at the Center for Policy Research, said argued That the pandemic worsened the well-documented economic marginalization of Muslims in India – and especially in the informal sector at a time when misinformation was being spread about how the community was perpetuating the infection.
This year too, there have been some calls for an economic boycott of Muslims, including a campaign targeting mango merchants from the community, and another call for ban on them in temple fairs (both these examples were in Karnataka).
According to Prasad, it appears that discriminatory attitudes towards Muslims are prevalent in most areas. “This ideology is being opposed neither by the political class nor by the business class. Discrimination in hiring has always been sharp, but after the pandemic, it has intensified,” she claimed.
Hilal Ahmed, associate professor at the Delhi-based Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), said he has observed that rising unemploymentMany Muslims exited the job market and went back to their families’ “traditional occupations”.
(Edited by Aswari Singh)
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