5 million jobs lost during high-growth years, says study

[prasad1]

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NEW DELHI: As many as five million jobs were lost between 2004-05 and 2009-10 — paradoxically during the time when India's economy grew at a fast clip — an Assocham study said.

This has put a question mark on whether economic expansion should be linked to job creation, according to the study.

Moreover, it observed that over-emphasis on services and neglect of the manufacturing sector are mainly responsible for this "jobless growth" phenomenon. Even as about 13 million youth are entering labour force every year, the gap between employment and growth widened during the period, the study noted.

"The Indian economy went through a period of jobless growth when five million jobs were lost between 2004-05 and 2009-10 while the economy was growing at an impressive rate," Assocham said.

Quoting Census data, it said the number of people seeking jobs grew annually at 2.23 per cent between 2001 and 2011, but growth in actual employment during the same period was only 1.4 per cent.

"This large workforce needs to be productively engaged to avoid socio-economic conflicts," Assocham secretary general D S Rawat said.

The changing demographic patterns, he said, suggest that today's youth is better educated, probably more skilled than the previous generation and highly aspirational.

"In a service-driven economy, which contributed 67.3 per cent (at constant price) to GDP but employed only 27 per cent of total workforce in 2013-14, enough jobs will not be created to absorb the burgeoning workforce," Assocham added.

Experts argue that the growth of manufacturing will be key for growth in income and employment for multiple reasons. For every job created in the manufacturing sector, three additional jobs are created in related activities.

In 2013-14, manufacturing contributed 15 per cent to GDP and employed about the same percentage of total workforce, a sign that the sector has a better labour absorption compared with services.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...wth-years-says-study/articleshow/48640527.cms

If we increase productivity we may not be able to increase jobs, and similarly economic growth may not translate in growth in employment.

 

[sangom]

உழுவார் உலகத்தார்க்கு ஆணியஃ து ஆற்றா-
தெழுவாரை எல்லாம் பொறுத்து.

(பல்வேறு தொழில் புரிகின்ற மக்களின் பசி போக்கிடும் தொழிலாக உழவுத் தொழில் இருப்பதால் அதுவே உலகத்தாரைத் தாங்கி நிற்கும் அச்சாணி எனப்படும்.)

Since agriculture is the occupation which satiates the hunger of all people in all kinds of occupations, it (agriculture) is the fulcrum which sustains the world.

Unless the government stops its pretended sleep towards agriculture in India, and takes urgent and earnest steps to increase agricultural production, even the problem of unemployment will continue to increase further.

 

[krish44]

The basic issue is service sector alone cannot be expected to absorb the complete work force.

the employment in agriculture sector is reduced and extra labour is required at only certain periods.

manufacturing is not absorbing enough .

the growth is meaningless when bulk of the work force skilled or otherwise is either under or unemployed.

growth statistics are only numbers.

 

[prasad1]

[h=1]A World Without Work[/h] For centuries, experts have predicted that machines would make workers obsolete. That moment may finally be arriving. Could that be a good thing?


1. Youngstown, U.S.A.
The end of work is still just a futuristic concept for most of the United States, but it is something like a moment in history for Youngstown, Ohio, one its residents can cite with precision: September 19, 1977.
For much of the 20th century, Youngstown’s steel mills delivered such great prosperity that the city was a model of the American dream, boasting a median income and a homeownership rate that were among the nation’s highest. But as manufacturing shifted abroad after World War II, Youngstown steel suffered, and on that gray September afternoon in 1977, Youngstown Sheet and Tube announced the shuttering of its Campbell Works mill. Within five years, the city lost 50,000 jobs and $1.3 billion in manufacturing wages. The effect was so severe that a term was coined to describe the fallout: regional depression.

Youngstown was transformed not only by an economic disruption but also by a psychological and cultural breakdown. Depression, spousal abuse, and suicide all became much more prevalent; the caseload of the area’s mental-health center tripled within a decade. The city built four prisons in the mid-1990s—a rare growth industry. One of the few downtown construction projects of that period was a museum dedicated to the defunct steel industry.
This winter, I traveled to Ohio to consider what would happen if technology permanently replaced a great deal of human work. I wasn’t seeking a tour of our automated future. I went because Youngstown has become a national metaphor for the decline of labor, a place where the middle class of the 20th century has become a museum exhibit.


“Youngstown’s story is America’s story, because it shows that when jobs go away, the cultural cohesion of a place is destroyed,” says John Russo, a professor of labor studies at Youngstown State University. “The cultural breakdown matters even more than the economic breakdown.”
In the past few years, even as the United States has pulled itself partway out of the jobs hole created by the Great Recession, some economists and technologists have warned that the economy is near a tipping point. When they peer deeply into labor-market data, they see troubling signs, masked for now by a cyclical recovery. And when they look up from their spreadsheets, they see automation high and low—robots in the operating room and behind the fast-food counter. They imagine self-driving cars snaking through the streets and Amazon drones dotting the sky, replacing millions of drivers, warehouse stockers, and retail workers. They observe that the capabilities of machines—already formidable—continue to expand exponentially, while our own remain the same. And they wonder: Is any job truly safe?
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/world-without-work/395294/

 

[prasad1]

The most common occupation among American men is driving. But the advent of the driverless car could put lots of cab drivers, truck drivers and limo drivers out of work in the not-so-distant future. Automation may also replace the jobs of many retail salespeople, cashiers, office clerks and food and beverage workers, said Derek Thompson, senior editor of The Atlantic, in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that will air Sunday.
“You look at the fleet of automated technologies, of software that exists right now, and it’s rather frightening to me to think about how many jobs can be replaced by technologies that we understand to be right on the horizon,” Thompson told Zakaria.
Thompson wrote The Atlantic’s July/August cover story called “A World Without Work.”
He went to Youngstown, Ohio, a once-thriving steel town that has already experienced what Thompson calls “the end of work.”
Jobs there disappeared after the steel industry collapsed thanks in part to globalization and technology.
With few full-time work opportunities left, residents of Youngstown have made do by cobbling together a series of smaller part-time jobs, Thompson said: t-shirt designer, bartender, mechanic, poet, urban farmer.
People in Youngstown don’t ask “What do you do?” at a party, he noted. They ask, “What can you do?”
“If this is a glimpse of the future and the pillar of work that was there collapses for more of us, will it be replaced with just despondency or will it be replaced with something like resiliency?” Thompson said.

 

[krish44]

In years of rule of nawabs in avadh ,mughal emperors built on a large scale forts, mosques and carried out other civil works to keep the people occupied with work.

they realised that an idle population could be a threat to their rule.

It is not wise to have high levels of labour displacing automation.

our MNREGA programme in villages kept people occupied with inconsequential work in many places.

It provided employment to lakhs in our rural areas and kept them away from hunger and total poverty.

 

[yesmohan]

The economic growth rate would be the highest if all industries are totally/fully mechanised.The result would prove that the overhead on labour/wage is at the minimum and profit the maximum.

If there are 6 members in a family, by killing 5 non-earning members would, for mathematical calculation increases the per capita income of the family.

The real economic growth rate of a country should have a definite correlation to the improvement in standard of ling of the society, at large.