Employment and Unemployment Situation Among Social Groups in India NSS 68th Round (July 2011 – June 2012)

FOCUS

This report was released by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation in January 2015. The NSSO has been conducting surveys on employment and employment with a large sample of households since 1972. The data for this report was collected during the 68th round of the National Sample Survey between July 2011 and June 2012.

The survey collected information from people falling into four broad groups: Scheduled Tribes (SC), Scheduled Castes (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Others. The survey covered all of India except for certain villages in Nagaland and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The sample included 101,724 households (59,700 in rural areas and 42,024 in urban areas) making up 456,999 people (280,763 in rural areas and 176,236 in urban areas). It covered 13,406 ST households, 15,652 SC households, 39,721 OBC households and 32,943 other households.

Employment and unemployment data in the report is calculated as per usual status (with a reference period of the last 365 days preceding the date of the survey). In addition to this, the report focuses on household characteristics, demographic particulars of household members as well as primary and subsidiary economic activities. It also records conditions of employment.

The 419-page report is divided into three chapters: Introduction (Chapter One); Concepts and Definitions (Chapter Two); and Summary of Findings (Chapter Three). The report also includes state-level data presented across five appendices: Detailed Tables (Appendix A); Sample Design and Estimation Procedure (Appendix B); Projected Population (Appendix C); Schedule on Employment and Unemployment (Sch. 10) (Appendix D); and RSEs of worker population ratio (WPR) (Appendix E).

    FACTOIDS

  1. The report notes that 68.8 per cent of Indian households were located in rural areas and accounted for 71.2 per cent of the total population of the country. OBC households comprised  43.1 per cent of the total households in the country, followed by SC households at 18.7 per cent and ST households at 8.8 per cent.

  2. Percentage of households owning 4.01 hectares or more land was the highest among the Others category at 4.3 per cent, followed by OBC households at 3.2 per cent. Only 1.8 per cent of ST households owned 4.01 or more hectares while the percentage of SC households with such land holdings was 0.8 per cent.

  3. Self-employment was the major source of income in 58.4 per cent of rural households in the Others category. The corresponding figures for OBC, ST and SC households in rural areas were 52.9 per cent, 49.5 per cent and 33.7 per cent respectively. Rural households depending on casual labour as their major source of income were highest among the Scheduled Castes at 52.6 per cent, followed by Scheduled Tribes at 38.3 per cent and Other Backward Classes at 32.1 per cent. Households in the Others category were least dependent on casual labour at 21 per cent.

  4. Rural households from ST and SC categories held a higher proportion of MGNREGA than households from OBC or other categories. More than half of ST and SC households (57.2 per cent and 50 per cent) had such job cards compared to 34.2 per cent of OBC households and 27.1 per cent of other households.

  5. Around 28.1 per cent of men over the age of 18 years had a MGNREGA job card compared to only 19.4 per cent of women over 18 years of age. Of all the people registered on such cards, the survey found that only 50.5 per cent got MGNREGA work while 18.8 per cent sought but were not assigned any. Around 30.5 per cent of people with cards did not seek MGNREGA work.

  6. At the national level, the labour force participation rate was highest among the Scheduled Tribes at 45.9 per cent, followed by Scheduled Castes at 40.4 per cent. Among the Other Backward Classes it was 38.9 per cent and for Others it was around 37.8 per cent.

  7. Unemployment was recorded to be higher in urban areas compared to rural areas. Among men in rural areas, unemployment was highest among those belong to Scheduled Castes (2 per cent), followed by Others (1.8 per cent), Other Backward Classes (1.7 per cent) and Scheduled Tribes (1.3 per cent). Among women, unemployment was highest among Others (2.4 per cent), followed by OBCs (1.7 per cent), SCs (1.4 per cent) and STs (1.1 per cent).

  8. In urban areas, men among the ST and Others categories had higher unemployment at 3.4 per cent each, followed by men from the SC and OBC categories, 3.2 per cent and 2.5 per respectively. Women belonging to the Others category reported highest unemployment at 6.3 per cent, followed by women from Scheduled Tribes (4.8 per cent), Other Backward Classes (4.7 per cent) and Scheduled Castes (4.5 per cent).


    Focus and Factoids by Kanak Rajadhyaksha.

AUTHOR

National Sample Survey Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India

COPYRIGHT

National Sample Survey Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India

PUBLICATION DATE

ಜನವರಿ, 2015

TAGS

#employment #unemployment #labour

SHARE