Salaried jobs surge by nearly 7 million in September, data shows

The latest monthly data from the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) showed that September has the best number of salaried jobs since February 2020 – before the outbreak of the pandemic. The monthly growth figure is the best since January 2020, when it grew by 8 million sequentially.

There were 77.14 million employed in salaried jobs at the end of August and 76.46 million in July.

Of the new salaried jobs in September, about 4.15 million were added in urban areas. CMIE data shows that in urban India, the total number of salaried people rose to 50.46 million by the end of September, from 46.31 million in August.

In the broader labor market, the number of farmers fell from 2.51 million in September to 113.56 million as people began to move to non-farm jobs in both rural and urban areas at the end of the summer crop sowing season. CMIE data shows that this is evident from the fact that the number of people in small business and daily wage activities increased from 128.46 million in the previous month to 134 million in September.

A more nuanced analysis showed that formal and informal manufacturing jobs increased by 2.9 million in September. The food industry (2.5 million additional), metals (1.5 million additional), pharma, footwear, gems and jewelery and handicrafts added a large number of jobs.

Textiles lost nearly one million jobs, while cement, tile and glass bricks together laid off more than 1.5 million workers, and the automobile and transportation sectors laid off about 350,000 jobs in September compared to August.

Economists and experts argue that the CMIE data reflects two key features – economic activity is slowly picking up, but several key areas are yet to improve.

“While professional and specialist services have been showing positive growth in the last few months and continue to add new jobs due to large scale deployment in IT sectors, segments such as trade, textiles and apparel, automobiles, cement are still lagging behind. The labor market is mixed: jobs are increasing in some sectors but regular core sector jobs are still muted. We have seen indications in its payroll data, and the CMIE data is giving more of that picture,” said labor economist KR Shyam Sundar.

CMIE data shows that the number of people employed in wholesale trade decreased by 4.58 million in September as compared to August. But financial services added 1.3 million people and about 58,000 people in the IT and ITeS sector in the same period. Overall, the number of people employed in the services sector saw a decline of 1.13 million in September as compared to August.

India has been facing a tough jobs market for the past few years and the situation has worsened amid the pandemic. Soon after the national lockdown was imposed last year, India’s unemployment rate exceeded 20%. It has now fallen below 7% but in a large labor market like India, the 7% unemployment rate is considered high and worrying.