Mapping employment

Data must be collected from employees, not employers

The task force recently set up on employment data under the leadership of NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya has a tough yet critical task ahead. Data on employment have always been difficult to estimate in India, but a rapidly changing economic environment and the emergence of new forms of contracts make it even more difficult to pin down job numbers. Good economic and monetary policies require almost real-time data on employment, and those, in turn, require a mechanism that captures the many facets of employment in a timely manner. This includes data from the rural and urban economy and from