India’s Employment Rate Increases Amid Economic Slowdown

2015 has been a great year for India's employment sector when the nation's employment rate in selected labour-intensive sectors has seen a net addition of 1.15 million jobs between periods April 2012 to March 2015, in a recent report by Economic Times India. 

Minister of State for Statistics and Programme Implementation VK Singh told Rajya Sabha that the last three surveys of National Sample Survey Office on Employment-Unemployment revealed that the nation's workforce grew from 45.90 crore persons in 2004-05 to 46.02 crore persons in 2009-10 and to 47.38 crore persons in 2011-12. 

India's labour ministry has been conducting quarterly employment surveys, focusing on the effects of employment economic slowdown since 2009.

According to the minister, based on the data gathered by the National Skill Development Agency, about 76.11 lakh persons were given skill development training in 2014-15 up to March, 2015.

Singh said in a statement that they have launched new schemes for the skill development of minority communities including the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, Swatchh Bharat Mission, and Seekho aur KamaoNoting. These are various steps the Inian government has taken in order to generate enough employment in the nation.

"Government has notified the National Food Security Act, 2013 on 10.09.2013, which aims to provide for food and nutritional security by ensuring access to adequate quantity of quality food at affordable prices," The minister added.

According to the report, the quarterly surveys conducted included export-oriented sectors of textiles, metals, gems and jewellery,  handloom and powerloom, automobiles, transport, leather and IT. 

India is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and considered to have the most populous democracy in the world.  

Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, the nation became one of the fastest-growing major economies. India also is considered a newly industrialised country. India's economy is the world's seventh-largest by nominal GDP and third-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP).

Real Time Analytics