India witnessed 5 million salaried job losses in July

Stating that the ballooning number of job losses among salaried class of employees is a source of worry; CMIE data said salaried jobs are far more difficult to retrieve and this type of jobs are not lost easily.

New Delhi: India saw as many as 5 million salaried job losses in the month of July 2020 said a recent data released by the Centre for Monitoring India Economy (CMIE). “ 5 million jobs were lost in July. On a net basis, the plight of salaried employees has worsened since the lockdown began. In April, they lost 17.7 million jobs. But by July, their losses had swelled to 18.9 million,” the CMIE data revealed.

Stating that the ballooning number of job losses among salaried class of employees is a source of worry; it added salaried jobs are far more difficult to retrieve and this type of jobs are not lost easily.

“Salaried jobs were nearly 19 million short of their average in 2019-20. They were 22 per cent lower than their level in the last fiscal year,” CMIE said.

After the salaried class, it is the daily wage earners, hawkers, small traders who were the worst hit by the pandemic driven lockdown in April halting all economic activities.

“Of the 121.5 million jobs lost in that month, 91.2 million were among these. This category of employment accounted for about 32 per cent of the total employment but, it suffered 75 per cent of the hit in April,” it said.

CMIE said the magnitude of job losses in the above mentioned category was so huge because their employment is almost entirely informal. Understandably, this informal category of employment thrives when the economy around them is alive and working. “When this economy shuts down, they lose their employment during that period. Similarly, as the economy unlocks in steps, these jobs come back almost in lockstep,” the data added.

However, with the onset of unlocking of the economy in a phased manner, jobs did come back from June. Yet, the jobs that came back were mostly in the informal category. "Of the 91.2 million such jobs lost in April, 14.4 million came back in May, 44.5 million in June and 25.5 million in July. Only 6.8 million remain to return," CMIE said.

According to the data, in India, only 21 per cent of all employment is in the form of a salaried employment. This category of employment is the most resilient to economic shudders. Therefore, in April this year, the data revealed, there was only 15 per cent job losses in the salaried category.

(ETV Bharat Report)