Opinion Signal from industry
Data shows employment picked up after Covid. But pace of job creation remains a challenge
As both these years — 2020-21 and 2021-22 — were marked by disruptions in economic activities on account of the pandemic, these surveys, by providing granular information, help in understanding how industry fared during those years. 
On Monday, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation released the results for the Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) for 2020-21 and 2021-22. These surveys cover factories employing 10 or more workers using power and those employing 20 or more workers without power. As such, they form a critical source of information on the registered organised manufacturing sector in the economy. As both these years — 2020-21 and 2021-22 — were marked by disruptions in economic activities on account of the pandemic, these surveys, by providing granular information, help in understanding how industry fared during those years.
At the aggregate level, gross value added grew by 8.8 per cent in 2020-21 (in current prices), after registering a fall the year before. Growth in value added was driven by a sharper fall in input (at 4.07 per cent) than output (which fell by 1.9 per cent). In 2021-22, as the economy rebounded, value added grew by 26.6 per cent, with output growing at 35.4 per cent. In both these years, the registered organised manufacturing sector grew at a faster pace than the unorganised sector. The industries that drove growth during 2021-22 were manufacture of basic metal, coke and refined petroleum products, pharmaceuticals, motor vehicles, and chemicals — value added by these industries grew by 34.4 per cent. Profits, which were also depressed in 2019-20, bounced back during this period.
The estimates of employment show that during the first year of the pandemic, total persons engaged fell marginally by 3.2 per cent — from 1.66 crore in 2019-20 to 1.6 crore in 2020-21. Employment picked up thereafter, with total persons engaged rising to 1.7 crore in 2021-22 — an increase of 7 per cent. This pick up in employment is encouraging. However, the pace at which quality jobs are being generated across all sectors at the aggregate all-India level leaves much to be desired. Between 2017-18 and 2022-23, while the labour force participation rate (15 years and above) saw a steady increase, rising from 49.8 per cent to 57.9 per cent, a greater percentage of workers were self-employed, not engaged in regular salaried or casual wage employment, as per the periodic labour force surveys.
The share of workers that were self-employed rose from 52.2 per cent in 2017-18 to 57.3 per cent in 2022-23. Over the same period, the share of workers in manufacturing declined from 12.1 per cent to 11.4 per cent. This jobs dilemma has been, and will remain, the principal policy challenge.
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