As per the survey (QES), which is fourth in series of the revamped survey released last year, manufacturing employed 12.25 million workers followed by 6.9 million in the education sector, 3.8 million in IT/BPOs and 3.3 million in the health sector. These four sectors constituted 83% of the total estimated workers in the nine sectors.
The nine sectors selected for the survey includes manufacturing, construction, trade, transport, education, health, accommodation and restaurant, IT/BPO and financial services and includes establishments with 10 or more workers.
As per the labour ministry, the total employment in the nine selected sectors taken collectively was reported as 2.37 crore in the sixth Economic Census (2013-14).
According to the Survey, female workers’ participation reported a marginal increase from 31.6% in the third quarter to 31.8% in the fourth quarter. However, female workers constituted about 52% of the workforce in the health sector, 44% in education, 41% in financial services and 36% in the IT/BPO sector with females outnumbering males among self-employed persons in the financial services sector.
During the fourth quarter, out of 12,038 allocated samples, 11732 units or 0.53 million establishments were surveyed.
As per the QES, of the total employment estimated in the selected nine sectors, manufacturing accounted for 38.5% followed by education with 21.7%, IT/BPOs around 12% and health sector 10.6%. Trade and transport sectors engaged 5.3% and 4.2% of the total estimated workers respectively
The Labour Bureau, under the ministry of labour and employment, had last done the seventh QES for the July-September quarter of 2017. Work of the eighth QES for October-December 2017 was subsequently put on hold because of a wide divergence in data on employment generation under this survey and the payroll data.
According to the ministry, the quarter-on-quarter survey results will provide a relative change in employment situation over successive quarters in the above segment of the Indian economy.
However, comparative data for the preceding fiscal (2020-21) is not available as the QES was suspended for several years and was launched in its present revamped form from April-June 2021.