Employment and Unemployment Since the Early Seventies

The author documents Indian employment trends since the 1970s. He fits time trends and analyzes the time patterns of employment, unemployment, and being out of the work force. For males, he finds no statistically significant trend in the rural employment rate and a statistically significant upward trend in the urban employment rate. Trends for females give a mixed picture: in rural areas, there is a significant downward trend or no significant trend in the employment rate depending on how this rate is measured. In urban areas, the direction of the employment trend for females is sensitive to measurement assumptions. The author concludes that pronouncements on a slow down in employment growth since 1993-94 are based on inappropriate measurement and invalid employment elasticity analysis and that the long term trends in employment rates evident in the data do not support such pessimistic pronouncements.