Labour ministry leads employment generation talks with 20 ministries

The labour and employment ministry has convened a meeting on Friday with 20 ministries, directly and indirectly related to employment generation, to push employment creation in their sectors and firm up ways to track employment data in a regular and formalised manner. A senior government official told ET that labour minister Mansukh Mandaviya will chair the meeting, which is being held following the announcement of three employment-linked incentive schemes in the budget with emphasis on creating a comprehensive database for employment generation.

The minister is expected to take stock of steps taken by each ministry or department to focus on employment generation and promotion of decent work behaviour as well as female participation at workplaces, said the official, who did not wish to be identified.

Besides, each ministry is likely to present the employment generation potential across the sectors under its charge as well as the impact of emerging transformations (tech and non-tech) on employment trends.

Secretaries of the ministries of agriculture, road transport and highways, commerce and industry, health, skills development and entrepreneurship, and departments of financial services and expenditure, among others, are expected to attend the meeting to deliberate on employment generation-related measures.

The plan is to collate the employment related data and information at a disaggregated sectoral level to get a holistic view of the emerging trends and challenges to job creation, demand and supply matching, employability, data and trends on employment from employer and employee side that will aid in policy-making“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 to come up with a mechanism for regular employment data collection by different central ministries, states and union territories across ongoing programmes,” said labour secretary Sumita Dawra. 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.

The labour and employment ministry feels that policy reforms across sectors, including labour and employment, logistics, infrastructure and manufacturing, including the labour codes, PM GatiShakti National Master Plan, Production Linked Incentive scheme and Bharatmala, Sagarmala, have been promoting employment generation opportunities and 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.