Textiles & IT/BPO push job growth

Added bulk of rise in labour-intensive sectors for September quarter; export segments fuel increase across the board

Eight sectors tracked by the Union government's Labour Bureau reported a combined rise in employment by 143,000 persons during the second quarter of the current financial year over the first quarter. This was the highest addition to jobs in these sectors in three quarters.

Only two of the eight sectors, gems & jewellery and transport, saw a fall in jobs generated, showed data issued by the Shimla-based bureau. Also, employment growth in the handloom-powerloom sector was flat. The bureau did a sample survey of 2,303 units for the data. Hence, these aren't exhaustive but indicate a broad trend.

About 88 per cent of the total rise was generated by only two sectors, textiles and information technology/business process outsourcing (IT-BPO). These two saw an addition of 127,000 jobs. Textiles added 66,000 and IT-BPO gave employment to 61,000 more.

"The growth seems to be coming from the relative revival of the US economy and, to some extent, the global economy as well," Shaibal Gupta, founder and member-secretary of Asian Development Research Institute in Patna, told Business Standard.He said with inflation hitting the purchasing power of the people, the domestic economy is unlikely to be giving this impetus.

The US economy grew at two-year high of 4.1 per cent in the July-September quarter of 2013. In fact, 62 per cent of all jobs created in the textiles sector (41,000) were contributed by exporting units.

Textiles was one of the few sectors showing growth in the Index of Industrial Production figures. While total industrial production contracted 0.2 per cent in April-November, textile sector output rose 3.7 per cent.

And, it was the domestic sector in IT-BPO which added to most of the growth in employment. Exporting units added only 10,000 jobs, while the domestic sector gave employment to 51,000 more. Since the bureau clubbed the IT and BPO segments, the exact addition by the latter, which might have given a different picture on the export sector isn't known.

Even as a ban on export of iron ore is yet to be lifted, there was a marked fillip to job generation by the metals sector. It added 11,000 in the July-September quarter sequentially. In the first quarter of 2013-14, the sector had seen a fall in jobs of 38,000. Exporting units provided jobs to 8,000 workers or 72 per cent of the employment rise in the sector.

Automobiles added jobs for 7,000 people, most of which (6,000) came from exporters.

Gems and jewellery saw a fall in employment by 6,000 in the second quarter sequentially, as the government successively raise the duty on gold import and allowed inbound shipment only when 20 per cent of this was re-exported. In fact, the portion catering to the domestic sector saw a greater fall of employment, at 14,000 people. Exporters added 6,000 jobs.

Transport saw employment coming down by 2,000 persons.

This was the 19th round of the survey, started from October-December 2008, to assess the impact of the global financial crisis on selected labour-intensive sectors. About half a million workers lost their jobs in that period, according to the survey.