Chennai: The employment and unemployment data released by the government plays a crucial role in the development of the country’s economic growth. It is the government’s job to release appropriate and real-time reports on the current scenario of the country’s employment and unemployment status.
In India, the government releases two important reports on the labour market to calculate the employment status in the country. One is the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) and the other is the Annual Employment-Unemployment Survey.
The QES for 2018 has not been released as of now. It was last released in 2015-16. No appropriate explanations have been provided by the government either. The government says that the reports for 2015-16 are still in process.
A committee consisting of chief statisticians was assigned to submit a report within a month on improving the methodologies of collecting the data. Months have passed, but the committee has not been able to come up with a report yet.
The previous report that was released failed to show impressive or even moderate employment generation in the key sectors. The portrayed a decline in many employment for many sectors. The manufacturing and construction sector has had to face job losses too.
According to a report by The Print, the government has started an initiative to report the progress made in formal employment for the total organisation payroll in India, after being suggested to look at the administrative data of the employees’ provident fund Organisation (EPFO), the National Pension Scheme (NPS) and the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC).
The purpose of releasing the datasets is to overcome the primary limitations in survey methods. The results of the EPFO and the NPS have introduced new ways to real-time payroll data reporting.