Job creation by the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) sector saw a growth of 13.9 per cent in the past four years, according to a survey by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
The findings are contrary to the official and other industry data which show that there was massive job losses since the the note-bank and GST implementation in this very sector. While private sector economic think-tank has found that as many as 13 million jobs were lost in 2018 alone, the official NSSO data show that unemployment rate touched a 46- year high in 2018.
According to a CII survey among over 1 lakh MSMEs, there has been a 13.9 per cent increase net jobs additions, over the past four years, which is a 3.3 per cent increase per annum in these four years. The survey, that covered 1,05,347 MSMEs of varying sizes, across sectors, located in about 350 industrial centres spread across the country, indicates that micro enterprises were the largest job creators in the past four years and will continue to be so in the next three years.
During the past four years, the top job generating sectors were hospitality & tourism followed by textiles & apparel, metal products, machinery and parts, and transport and logistics. In terms of states, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Telangana were the largest job creators, while in case of exporters, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Telangana topped.
To put the findings in context, the survey mapped the jobs figures against publicly available macro-level data sourced from the Labour Bureau (for total workforce). “Given that the total workforce size according to the Labour Bureau is estimated at 450 million, the overall job additions work out to 13.5-14.9 million per annum,” it said.
“There is an expectations of higher growth on employment for the next three years,” the survey said. This optimism emanates from the fact that government initiatives like the 2 per cent interest subvention given to all MSMEs and trade receivables e-discounting system (TReDS) would drive future growth leading to more employment, the report said.