Structural change and increasing precarity of employment in India

Abstract

This paper analyses the nature and increasing precarity of India’s employment in the last decade and a half. It examines the trends in informal employment in India in 2004–05, 2011–12 and 2017–18. The analysis reveals that there has been a significant degree of informalisation of employment in the formal sector of the economy, and among regular/salaried workers, who form the predominant section of the formal sector workforce. This has counteracted the potentially positive effect of the economy-wide shift from agricultural to non-agricultural employment, towards regular/salaried work and towards formal sector growth. This result reflects on the long-standing debate in India on the impact of formal labour relations on the formal sector employment. Formal employment is considered to be associated with very rigid labour laws restricting hiring and firing of workers. However, the paper shows that formal sector employment has expanded but with much greater informality of employment. This situation demands urgent attention in order to reverse the increasing precariousness of employment and engage policy levers in reducing the growing labour market inequalities in India.