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How NSS missed voluntary unemployment

Subhomoy Bhattacharjee & Mamata Singh

In a bid to deflect criticism over the rising unemployment statistics in the decade of reforms, official figures are expected to be reclassified using a new category that splits the ranks of the unemployed.

While the task force on unemployment is expected to show that the employment scene in the country has not deteriorated in the 1990s, the results of the latest 55th round of the National Sample Survey shows that it has indeed gone up by 2-3 per cent, as per the "usual" status. Using the "daily status" figures, which are a more acceptable measure of the level of employment, the unemployment level has gone up by between 5 -7 per cent between 1993-94 and 1999-2000, which is higher than that in comparable economies.

But surprisingly, the recently released report of the Planning Commission's study group on development of small scale enterprises shows that 11.29 million jobs were added in the agriculture and non-agricultural sectors between 1990 and 1998.

This includes a category called "voluntary unemployment"-that is people who are not working out of choice. Without this category, the number of jobs has actually gone down by 7.03 million.

The figures are interesting as the task force on unemployment is also working on the same premise -in its attempt to show that the decade of reforms has not pushed up unemployment. Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha recently even told Parliament that the effectiveness of reforms will become evident once the report of the task force on unemployment comes out.

This is especially so in rural areas where inclusive of the voluntary unemployment figures, the number of jobs has gone up by 6.67 million. However, if the voluntary unemployment figures are excluded, the number of jobs has gone down by 4 million.

In urban areas also, provisional figures from the economic census state that the number of jobs has gone down by 3 million.

But including the figures of the voluntarily unemployed jacks up the final figures of employed to 9.58 million in the last decade. Sources also said that the task force has compared the figures of 1983 to 1993 and the figures of 1994 to 1998.

The increase in the employment figures has to be seen in the context of the decrease in labour supply as during the decade population growth rate has slowed down, and people are putting off joining the labour force to instead pursue higher education or training.

The slowdown in labour force growth and the exclusion of the 'voluntarily unemployed' from the list has pushed down the percentage, according to the task force.

Experts also say that the 'slowing down' of labour force supply cannot be fully explained on the basis of education. They say this would logically apply only to the urban upper class.

And even if the poorer sections concentrate on education for the time being, this will just delay entry into the job market by just 2-3 years. This means that there is a potential bulge, which will push up the unemployment figures more after a few years.

In addition, a large portion of the labour force consists of the self-employed, for whom it is not possible to move out of the labour force in order to go in for higher education, add experts.

They also said that comparing the task force report with UNDP findings shows that India is the only developing country which has a declining ratio of employed to the population, highly unlikely given the demographic profile of the country.

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