In News:
- According to the 4th round (January-March 2022) of the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES), which is a part of the All-India Quarterly Establishment based Employment Survey (AQEES), manufacturing remains the largest institutional employer in the country, employing about 38.5% of the workforce.
- According to the survey, which was recently released by the Union Labour Minister, there was an increase of approximately 4 lakh workers compared to the third round of QES, which was conducted for the last three months of 2021.
What’s in today’s article:
- About the AQEES
- News Summary
About the All-India Quarterly Establishment based Employment Survey (AQEES):
- In order to generate high quality data on the labour market, the Labour Bureau, Ministry of Labour and Employment, has been entrusted with the task of conducting the AQEES.
- AQEES has two components namely:
- Quarterly Employment Survey (QES): conducted in respect of establishments employing 10 or more workers (mostly the ‘organised’ segment).
- Area Frame Establishment Survey (AFES): conducted in respect of establishments employing 9 or less workers (mostly the ‘unorganised’ segment).
- The scope and coverage of QES is further limited to employment in the non-farm economy covering 9 sectors - Manufacturing, Construction, Trade, Transport, Education, Health, Accommodation & Restaurants, IT/BPO and Financial Services.
- The report on QES being a demand side survey along with supply side survey - Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS is conducted by the National Statistical Organization (NSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation) will -
- Bridge data gaps on employment in the country.
- Give insights into the change of employment over the previous quarters and many other related parameters.
- Serve as useful data for policy-makers, Central or State Governments officials, researchers and other stakeholders for the welfare of labour.
News Summary - Findings of the 4th round of QES:
- Employment was on the rise, with estimates ranging from 3.14 crore in the third quarter (September-December 2021) to 3.18 crore workers in the fourth quarter (January-March 2022), an increase of approximately 4 lakh workers.
- It is worth noting that the total employment in these 9 selected sectors was reported as 2.37 crore in the sixth economic census (2013-14).
- According to the 4th round of QES survey, 4% of the workers were regular employees, 8.7% were contractual employees, 2.3% were casual employees and 2% were self-employed.
- The proportion of fixed-term employees in the establishments was discovered to be the lowest (0.7%) overall.
- Education, manufacturing, trade and financial services together accounted for 84% of the total estimated units.
- Manufacturing sector accounts for the largest percentage (38.5%) of the total number of workers, followed by the education sector (21.7%), IT/BPO sector (12%) and Health sector (10.6%).
- Almost 80% of the businesses employed 10 to 99 people. Approximately 12% of the businesses had fewer than 10 employees.
- Only 1.4% of the establishments surveyed reported at least 500 employees. Such large establishments were mostly in the IT/BPO and health sectors.
- Women's labour-force participation increased marginally from 31.6% in the third quarter to 31.8% in the fourth quarter.
- Women workers made up approximately 52% of the workforce in the health sector, while the corresponding percentages in education, financial services and IT/BPO were 44%, 41% and 36% respectively.
- It is worth noting that women outnumber men among self-employed people in financial services.
