Labour minister to meet with 20 ministries on 'capturing' employment data

Meeting will on Friday review steps taken by ministries and departments for generating employment

Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya will on Friday meet with officials of 20 ministries in a bid to develop a "holistic mechanism" for regular employment data collection by them and states.

The meeting will include officials of ministries of agriculture, coal, corporate affairs, statistics, skill development, and textiles. "This exercise would serve as the starting point in formalising a way to capturing data for insights and creating interlinkages between the demand and supply side of jobs across the country," Labour Secretary Sumita Dawra told 'Business Standard'.

The meeting will review steps taken by each ministry or department for generating employment and promoting decent work behaviour as well as female participation at workplaces.

Each ministry is likely to present at the meeting employment generation potential in sectors under its charge and the impact of emerging transformations (tech and non-tech) on employment trends.

“A need is felt to come up with a 360-degree approach that leverages existing initiatives, identifies systematic interventions and builds synergies across different stakeholders," said the Labour Secretary.

The Labour and Employment Ministry feels that policy reforms in sectors and government infrastructure programmes created employment and helped ease of doing business in the country.

However, despite being a valuable source, schemes or programmes and initiatives have not been exploited to estimate employment generation, prompting the labour and employment ministry to initiate measures on employment generation, data collation and tracking.

India’s working-age population is expected to increase about 9.7 million per year during 2021-31 and 4.2 million per year during 2031-41, according to government estimates.