Jobs

Where are the jobs?

jobs

One million Indians are entering the workforce every month. This makes it around 1.2 crore a year, which is around half the total population of Australia.

This is India’s demographic dividend, which is supposed to find a job, earn and spend, pull India’s crores out of poverty. At least, that is the story that we have been sold over the years. But the theory is not translating into practice.

The land-owning communities across large parts of the country have been on the streets, protesting. This includes the Marathas of Maharashtra, the Jats of Haryana, the Kapus of Andhra Pradesh and the Patidar Patels of Gujarat.

The average size of the land farmed by the Indian farmer has fallen over the decades and in 2010-2011, the last time the agriculture census was carried out, stood at 1.16 hectares. In 1970-1971 it had stood at 2.82 hectares.

This has happened because of the division of land across generations. Further, this fall in farm size has made farming in many parts of the country, an unviable activity. And this explains why the land-owning castes across the country have been protesting and want a reservation in government jobs.

The trouble is that the government does not create jobs any more. In fact, between January 2006 and January 2014, the number of central government employees went up by just 30,000. The total number of people working for the public-sector enterprises has fallen over the years.

Only three out of five individuals who are looking for a job all through the year, are able to find one. In rural India, only one out of two individuals who are looking for a job all through the year, are able to find one. This has been the state of things since 2013-2014.
In fact, as far as Indian industry is concerned it favours expansion through capital (i.e. buying more machines and equipment) than recruiting more people.

Nikhil Gupta and Madhurima Chowdhury analysts at Motilal Oswal, use data up to 2014-2015, from the Annual Survey of Industries, and based on it conclude that over a period of 35 years up to 2014-2015, the rate of employment in the Indian industry has increased at 1.9 per cent per year on an average. In comparison, the capital employed by industry has grown at the rate of 14 per cent per year.

Clearly, capital has won the race hands down. Or if I were to put it in simple words, when it comes to Indian industry, machine has won over man for a while now. The Indian corporates like the idea of expanding their production and in the process their business, by installing new machines and equipment, rather than employing more people.

One of the reasons for this is the huge number of labour laws that Indian firms need to follow. As Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya write in India’s Tryst with Destiny: “The costs due to labour legislations rise progressively in discrete steps at seven, ten, twenty, fifty and 100 workers. As the firm size rises from six regular workers towards 100, at no point between the two thresholds is the saving in manufacturing costs sufficiently large to pay for the extra costs of satisfying these laws.”

The National Manufacturing Policy of 2011 estimates that, on an average, a manufacturing unit needs to comply with nearly 70 laws and regulations.  At the same time, these units sometimes need to file as many as 100 returns a year.

This basically ensures that an average Indian firm starts small and continues to remain small. In the process, jobs aren’t created. This is reflected in the fact that close to 85 per cent of Indian apparel firms employ less than eight people. As per an Economic Survey estimate, close to 24 jobs are created in this sector per lakh of investment. Despite, this firms in this sector continue to remain small.

The points discussed up until now are essentially big structural issues, which have been around for a while. In the recent past, demonetisation which overnight made 86.4 per cent of the currency in circulation, useless, ended up destroying many firms operating in the informal sector. The Goods and Services Tax has added to this.

These days the presence of informal sector is seen as a bad thing because it doesn’t pay its fair share of taxes to the government. This isn’t totally true. People who work for these firms do spend the money that they earn and pay their share of indirect taxes. Also, as the Economic Survey of 2015-2016 points out: “The informal sector should… be credited with creating jobs and keeping unemployment low.”

As economist Jim Walker of Asianomics wrote in a research note sometime back: “There is nothing intrinsic that says that the informal economy is a less effective or beneficial source of activity than the formal economy.” This is something that the Modi government needs to understand.

In its quest for more taxes, it is working towards destroying large parts of the informal economy, which is a huge part of Indian economy. Ritika Mankar Mukherjee and Sumit Shekhar of Ambit Capital wrote in a research note: “India’s informal sector is large and labour-intensive. The informal sector accounts for ~40% of India’s GDP and employs close to ~75% of the Indian labour force.” 

And this is something that the government needs to remember in its bid to forcibly formalise the Indian economy.

The column originally appeared in the Deccan Herald on October 15, 2017.

India@70: Where are the jobs?

indian flag

On August 9, 2017, lakhs of people belonging to the Maratha caste poured into the city of Mumbai for a silent march. 57 similar marches had already taken place in the state of Maharashtra, starting from Aurangabad on August 9, 2016. This was the 58th. The rallying cause behind the marches was to protest against the rape and murder of a teenaged girl belonging to the caste in Ahmednagar district in July last year. Other than the rallying cause, the Marathas have demanded quotas in government run as well as aided educational institutions. They also want reservations in government jobs.

Marathas are not the only land-owning caste in the country demanding a reservation in government jobs. Similar demands have been made by the Patels in Gujarat, the Kapus in Andhra Pradesh, the Jats in Haryana and the Gujjars in Rajasthan. The question is why do land-owning castes suddenly want reservation in government jobs, seven decades after Independence?

A major reason for this lies in the fact that the average size of a farmer’s landholding has fallen over the years. As the State of Indian Agriculture Report of 2012-2013 points out: “As per [the] Agriculture Census [of] 2010-11, small and marginal holdings of less than 2 hectare[s] account for 85 per cent of the total operational holdings and 44 per cent of the total operated area. The average size[s] of [the] holdings for all operational classes (small & marginal, medium and large) have declined over the years, and for all classes put together it has come down to 1.16 hectare[s] in 2010-11 from 2.82 hectare[s] in 1970-71.”

Take a look at Figure 1.

Figure 1:  Decline in the average size of agricultural landholdings between 1970-1971 and 2010-2011.

Source: State of Indian Agriculture Report, 2012-2013.

The agriculture census is carried out every five years. Hence, the latest available data is as of 2010-2011. The situation would have only gotten worse since then. The trend of falling farm sizes can be clearly seen from Figure 1. As the same piece of land has got divided among more and more family members over the generations, the average holding has fallen dramatically. And this has made agriculture unviable for many in the land-owning castes. Hence, the demand for reservation in government jobs.

The trouble is that the government doesn’t create jobs anymore, neither at the level of state governments nor at the level of the central government. Hence, what will happen once the land-owning castes figure this out? Will they demand reservations in private jobs as well?

The rate of unemployment

The irony is that the huge demand for jobs among the land-owning castes and others is not reflected in India’s rate of unemployment. The Labour Bureau carries out the Annual Employment-Unemployment Survey. This Survey is hardly annual. It was first carried out in 2009-2010. It skipped a year and was carried out for the next three years. It skipped a year again in 2014-2015 and was carried out again in 2015-2016. The 2015-2016 Survey is what will be discussed here.

The Labour Bureau basically measures unemployment using two methods. The first method is called the Usual Principal Status (UPS) approach. In this approach, “the major time spent by a person (183 days or more) is used to determine whether the person is in the labour force or out of the labour force.”

As per this method, the rate of unemployment was just 5 per cent.

The second method is called the Usual Principal and Subsidiary Status (UPSS) approach. Here, “a person who has worked even for 30 days or more in any economic activity during the reference period of [the] past twelve months is considered as employed under this approach.” As per this method, only 3.7 per cent of the workforce was unemployed.

Such low rates of unemployment are hardly surprising given the definitions of unemployment that are being followed. In the first method, an individual might have been unemployed for close to half the year but would still be considered to be employed. In the second method, an individual might not have had a job for 11 months during the year and would be considered employed.

Given this, the rate of unemployment does not tell us anything about the desperate search for jobs. But there is another set of data points that the Labour Bureau puts out, and that rarely makes it to the media. Take a look at Table 1.

Table 1:  All-India percentage distribution of persons available for work for 12 months (UPSS approach).

Source: Report on the Fifth Annual Employment-Unemployment Survey, 2016.

Table 1 basically tells us what proportion of the population which is looking for a job all through the year is able to find one. Around 61 out of 100 Indians in the workforce looking for a job all through the year are able to find one. In rural areas, only around 53 out of 100 individuals who are looking for a job all through the year are able to find one. These numbers point towards the huge underemployment of India’s workforce.

This is hardly surprising given that in the last two financial years, agriculture has contributed around 14 per cent to the gross domestic product and employed close to half of the working population. There is a clear mismatch here. Around half the country’s workforce is only contributing 14 per cent of the GDP.

What this means is that there is huge disguised unemployment in the rural areas. Disguised unemployment essentially means that there are way too many people trying to make a living out of agriculture. On the face of it, they seem employed. Nevertheless, their employment is not wholly productive, given that agricultural production would not suffer even if some of these employed people stopped working.

So, the unemployment numbers might not point towards India’s distressing job situation but the underemployment number clearly does. This is also borne out in Figure 2, which has been sourced from a recent report titled OECD Economic Surveys India.

Figure 2:

This report puts the rate of unemployment among India’s youth between the ages of 15 and 29 at more than 30 per cent. These youths are neither employed nor in education or training.

Regular unemployment data

The Fifth Annual Employment-Unemployment Survey was carried out in 2015-2016. It has been close to a year and a half since then and we haven’t had any fresh unemployment data being published by the government.

As Volume 2 of the Economic Survey of 2016-2017 released earlier this month, points out: “The lack of reliable estimates on employment in recent years has impeded its measurement and thereby the Government faces challenges in adopting appropriate policy interventions.” It then lists out 10 ways used by the government to measure unemployment and the problems with them. The problems listed are: “Partial coverage, inadequate sample size, low frequency, long time lags, double counting, conceptual differences and definitional issues, rarely used for the purpose of employment estimation etc.” This, of course, leads to the question why have 10 wrong ways of measuring unemployment and not one right way?

The government has tried to correct this by setting up a task force headed by [now former] NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya to generate timely and reliable employment data. This is a step in the right direction. The tragedy is that this should have happened many years back, even before Narendra Modi took over as the prime minister. Of course, the previous governments are to be blamed for this as well. The Modi government also took more than three years to initiate something to solve this problem.

The trouble is that close to one million Indians are entering the workforce every month. That makes it around 1.2 crore Indians a year. And the government is still struggling with counting the number of the unemployed.

What makes things worse is that most of the individuals who are entering the workforce are not skilled enough. Over the years, the government has tried to correct this by outsourcing skill development to the private sector rather than just depending on the Industrial Training Institutes or the ITIs. But the scale of operation continues to remain very small.

As the Economic Survey referred to earlier points out: “For urban poor, Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana National Urban Livelihoods Mission (DAYNULM) imparts skill training for self and wage-employment through setting up self-employment ventures by providing credit at subsidized rates of interest. The government has now expanded the scope of DAY-NULM from 790 cities to 4,041 statutory towns in the country. So far, 8,37,764 beneficiaries have been skill-trained [and] 4,27,470 persons have been given employment.” When one million Indians are entering the workforce every month, this is not even a drop in the ocean.

Other data points

While we may not know the right rate of unemployment on a regular basis, there is enough other data that suggests that job creation is not happening. Take a look at Figure 3. It basically plots the bank lending to industry.

Figure 3:

Source: Reserve Bank of India.  

The lending carried out by banks to the industry has fallen over the years. In fact, in 2016-2017, the lending to industry shrunk by more than Rs 50,000 crore. This basically means that on the whole, the banks did not lend a single new rupee to the industry in 2016-2017. The reason for this is very straightforward. The industry has defaulted on its past loans and banks are no longer in the mood to lend.

This also shows us that the industries are no longer borrowing and expanding and creating jobs in the process. Of course, banks are not the only source of borrowing for industry. If we were to look at the overall flow of financial resources to the commercial sector it was down by around 11 per cent in 2016-2017 in comparison to a year earlier (Source: RBI Monetary Policy Report April 2017).

Over and above this, demonetisation had a huge negative impact on jobs in the informal sector. The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (a trade union affiliate of the BJP) estimated that nearly 2.5 lakh units in the unorganised sector were closed down. Then there is the latest Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Consumer Confidence Survey. More people now believe that the employment conditions have worsened over the last year.

The leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party like to claim that crores of jobs have been created through Mudra (Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency Bank) loans given out by banks. In 2015-2016 and 2016-2017, a total of 7.46 crore individuals were given Mudra loans. Hence, 7.46 crore jobs were created is the logic that is offered. But this is something that the CEO of Mudra does not confirm. As he told NDTV recently, when asked how many jobs had these loans created: “We are yet to make an assessment on that… We don’t have a number right now, but I understand that NITI Aayog is making an effort to do that.”

The point being India has a serious jobs problem and we aren’t doing much to tackle it. And there are going to be no acche din without jobs.

The column originally appeared on Newslaundry on August 15, 2017.

Who Will Survive the Coming Jobs Crisis?

jobs
In last week’s column I wrote about robots, automation, technology and algorithms, taking over human jobs. One reader wrote in asking by when is this likely to happen. I wish I knew. There are no straightforward answers here.

Many new organisations formed over the last few years, barely have any people working for them. Nevertheless, they are worth a bomb. Social media is an excellent example. As Edward Luce writes in The End of Western Liberalism: “In 2006, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion. It had sixty-five employees, so the price amounted to $25 million per employee. In 2012 Facebook bought Instagram, which had thirteen employees, for $1 billion. That came to $77 million per employee. In 2014, it bought WhatsApp, with fifty-five employees, for $19 billion, at a staggering $345 million per employee.”

Of course, these companies did not destroy jobs. They did not create them in the first place. But there is a lot of technology being created out there which is helping companies in not recruiting as many people as they did in the past and firing the existing employees as well. As Luce writes: “Facebook’s data servers are now managed by Cyborg, a software programme. It requires one human technician for every twenty thousand computers.”
The point being that jobs which require people to sit in front of computers and manipulate data to manage a system or to present them in an understandable form, are going to go, sooner rather than later. For example, as is well known robots can now driver cars.

The other big question is when will companies start firing employees because they no longer need them, with robots, automation or algorithms, taking over human jobs. This is a tricky question.

As Paul De Grauwe writes in The Limits of the Market: “There are psychological sources of resistance: people who work with old technologies will not always switch to new ones because the change means part of their knowledge has become worthless.”

Over and above this there are economic sources of resistance. As De Grauwe puts it: “Old machines and tools have to be disposed of early, factories have to be closed own and employees sacked. This leads to serious opposition and delays to the introduction of new technologies.”

In the Indian case, it is very difficult for companies to sack employees en masse. It is more than likely for the local politicians and the media will get involved, and the company will end-up getting a lot of bad press. Given this, it is highly unlikely that the information technology companies which have thousands of people working for them, will end up firing employees en masse.

What they will do instead is that they will not hire the number of people that they have been doing in the past. In fact, this phenomenon has already been at play over the last few years, with the salaries at the entry level in information technology companies, remaining more or less flat. Chances are you can make more money owning and driving an Uber or an Ola taxi, than being a new trainee engineer at an information technology company.

It is also visible in a huge number of engineering seats in colleges not being filled up across several states.

When companies follow this strategy of not recruiting, it is a tad easier for them in comparison to firing people whose skillsets they don’t need anymore. That simply gives them a lot of bad press.

It is not just those working in information technology companies whose jobs will be under threat. As Luce writes: “Some types of medical surgeon and architect will be as vulnerable to remote intelligence as plant engineers or call-centre operators.”

And who is likely to survive this onslaught? As Luce puts it: “Ironically, some of the lowest-paid jobs – in barbershops and nail salons – will be among the safest. No matter how dexterous your virtual service provider, it is hard to imagine how she could cut your hair.”

Now that is something worth thinking about.

The column originally appeared in Bangalore Mirror on July 12, 2017.

When It Comes to Creation of Jobs, We Agree and Disagree with Amit Shah

amit shah

The BJP president Amit Shah late last week said: “We have tried to give new perspective to employment as it is not possible to provide employment to everyone in a country of 125 crore people. We are promoting self-employment and the government has made eight crore people self-employed.”

Well it’s obvious that no government can create the huge number of jobs that India needs. But then politicians are not known to say the most obvious things. Hence, Shah deserves credit for saying what he did.

The number of jobs in central public sector enterprises has fallen over the years. Let’s take a look at Table 1.

Table 1: Employment and Average Annual Emoluments in CPSEs 

As can be seen from Table 1, the number of people employed by the central public sector enterprises has fallen over the last decade.

Now how do things look for the central government employees? On January 1, 2006, the central government had a sanctioned strength of 38.3 lakh. Against this, it had 32.7 lakh employees on its rolls. By January 1, 2010, the sanctioned strength had gone up to 38.9 lakh, while the number of employees had fallen to 32.3 lakh.

By January 1, 2014, the sanctioned strength had risen to 40.5 lakh, whereas the number of employees had risen marginally to 33 lakh. So, between 2006 and 2014, the central government basically added around 28,000 jobs.

Over and above this, the various state governments employ around 72 lakh individuals. Hence, the ability of the government to create jobs is limited. This does not help given that around one million Indians are entering the workforce every month. Hence, the economy needs to be creating 1.2 crore jobs every year, and that is clearly not happening.

In fact, the sad state of the Indian jobseeker can be made out from something I write in my new book India’s Big Government-The Intrusive State and How It is Hurting Us: “Only 60.6 per cent of the individuals who were available for work all through the year were able to get work for the entire year. In rural areas, this figure was at 52.7 per cent. This basically means that close to half of rural India cannot find work for all 12 months of the year.” These numbers were true for 2015-2016.

Further, the situation on this front is more or less the same since the last survey was carried out, in 2013-2014. As per the last survey, 60.5 per cent of individuals who were available for work all through the year had been able to find work for that entire year. In rural areas, this figure was at 53.2 per cent. The figures are more or less similar to those of the latest survey.

Last week Shah talked about self-employment and the government having made 8 crore people self-employed. In the next breath he also said: “There is no system to find out the exact availability of jobs in the country.” So that makes us wonder, where did the 8 crore number come from?

Also, Shah in his statement tried to pass-off self-employment as something unique to the current government. Self-employment is what almost every Indian who does not find a job, ends up with.

As Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo write in Poor Economics: “The sheer number of business owners among the poor is impressive. After all, everything seems to militate against the poor being entrepreneurs. They have less capital of their own (almost by definition) and… little access to formal insurance, banks and other sources of inexpensive finance…. Another characteristic of the businesses of the poor and the near-poor is that, on average, they are not making much money.”

The point here is that a large part of the workforce is not self-employed by choice but are self-employed because they have no other option. Banerjee and Duflo call them ‘reluctant entrepreneurs’. This can be made out from the fact around 46-47 per cent of the Indian workforce is self- employed.

The fact that Indians are reluctant entrepreneurs also becomes clear from some data highlighted in the National Manufacturing Policy of 2011. It estimated that the number of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in India stood at over 26 million (2.6 crore) units. They employed around 59 million (5.9 crore) people.

This means that any SME, on an average, employed 2.27 individuals. The Boston Consulting Group estimated that 36 million (3.6 crore) SMEs (or what it calls micro-SMEs) employ over 80 million (8 crore) employees. This means that any SME, on an average, employs 2.22 individuals. These firms are responsible for 45 per cent of the manufacturing output of the country.

What this clearly tells us is that the size of the average Indian manufacturing firm is very small. This is a good proof of the fact that most Indians getting into entrepreneurship do so because they don’t get jobs. They start small and continue to remain small. One reason lies in the fact that their business does not generate enough capital to expand.

The second reason lies in the lack of ease of doing of business. Any firm looking to grow soon runs into a maze of rules and regulations and corrupt bureaucrats appointed by both state and central government. Jobs are created when small firms start to grow big and recruit more people.

As an OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) research paper points out: “SMEs (small- and medium-sized enterprises) account for 60 to 70 per cent of jobs in most OECD countries, with a particularly large share in Italy and Japan, and a relatively smaller share in the United States. Throughout, they also account for a disproportionately large share of new jobs, especially in those countries which have displayed a strong employment record, including the United States and the Netherlands. Some evidence points also to the importance of age, rather than size, in job creation: young firms generate more than their share of employment.”

Hence, jobs are created when small firms grow. And that clearly isn’t happening in India. The labour laws continue to remain as screwed up as ever. And so does the ease of doing business. On that front Shah’s government has barely managed to move.

When it comes to creating jobs, the government can at best act as a facilitator and help the private sector and individuals create jobs. But that facilitation is easier said than done.

Postscript: I recently did a podcast with the writer Amit Varma who is currently the editor of the Pragati magazine, on The Coming Jobs Crisis. Most of what I spoke was based on my new book India’s Big Government-The Intrusive State and How It is Hurting Us. You can listen to the podcast here.

The column originally appeared in Equitymaster on May 29, 2017.

When It Comes to Creation of Jobs, We Agree and Disagree with Amit Shah

amit shah

The BJP president Amit Shah late last week said: “We have tried to give new perspective to employment as it is not possible to provide employment to everyone in a country of 125 crore people. We are promoting self-employment and the government has made eight crore people self-employed.”

Well it’s obvious that no government can create the huge number of jobs that India needs. But then politicians are not known to say the most obvious things. Hence, Shah deserves credit for saying what he did.

The number of jobs in central public sector enterprises has fallen over the years. Let’s take a look at Table 1.

Table 1: Employment and Average Annual Emoluments in CPSEs 

As can be seen from Table 1, the number of people employed by the central public sector enterprises has fallen over the last decade.

Now how do things look for the central government employees? On January 1, 2006, the central government had a sanctioned strength of 38.3 lakh. Against this, it had 32.7 lakh employees on its rolls. By January 1, 2010, the sanctioned strength had gone up to 38.9 lakh, while the number of employees had fallen to 32.3 lakh.

By January 1, 2014, the sanctioned strength had risen to 40.5 lakh, whereas the number of employees had risen marginally to 33 lakh. So, between 2006 and 2014, the central government basically added around 28,000 jobs.

Over and above this, the various state governments employ around 72 lakh individuals. Hence, the ability of the government to create jobs is limited. This does not help given that around one million Indians are entering the workforce every month. Hence, the economy needs to be creating 1.2 crore jobs every year, and that is clearly not happening.

In fact, the sad state of the Indian jobseeker can be made out from something I write in my new book India’s Big Government-The Intrusive State and How It is Hurting Us: “Only 60.6 per cent of the individuals who were available for work all through the year were able to get work for the entire year. In rural areas, this figure was at 52.7 per cent. This basically means that close to half of rural India cannot find work for all 12 months of the year.” These numbers were true for 2015-2016.

Further, the situation on this front is more or less the same since the last survey was carried out, in 2013-2014. As per the last survey, 60.5 per cent of individuals who were available for work all through the year had been able to find work for that entire year. In rural areas, this figure was at 53.2 per cent. The figures are more or less similar to those of the latest survey.

Last week Shah talked about self-employment and the government having made 8 crore people self-employed. In the next breath he also said: “There is no system to find out the exact availability of jobs in the country.” So that makes us wonder, where did the 8 crore number come from?

Also, Shah in his statement tried to pass-off self-employment as something unique to the current government. Self-employment is what almost every Indian who does not find a job, ends up with.

As Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo write in Poor Economics: “The sheer number of business owners among the poor is impressive. After all, everything seems to militate against the poor being entrepreneurs. They have less capital of their own (almost by definition) and… little access to formal insurance, banks and other sources of inexpensive finance…. Another characteristic of the businesses of the poor and the near-poor is that, on average, they are not making much money.”

The point here is that a large part of the workforce is not self-employed by choice but are self-employed because they have no other option. Banerjee and Duflo call them ‘reluctant entrepreneurs’. This can be made out from the fact around 46-47 per cent of the Indian workforce is self- employed.

The fact that Indians are reluctant entrepreneurs also becomes clear from some data highlighted in the National Manufacturing Policy of 2011. It estimated that the number of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in India stood at over 26 million (2.6 crore) units. They employed around 59 million (5.9 crore) people.

This means that any SME, on an average, employed 2.27 individuals. The Boston Consulting Group estimated that 36 million (3.6 crore) SMEs (or what it calls micro-SMEs) employ over 80 million (8 crore) employees. This means that any SME, on an average, employs 2.22 individuals. These firms are responsible for 45 per cent of the manufacturing output of the country.

What this clearly tells us is that the size of the average Indian manufacturing firm is very small. This is a good proof of the fact that most Indians getting into entrepreneurship do so because they don’t get jobs. They start small and continue to remain small. One reason lies in the fact that their business does not generate enough capital to expand.

The second reason lies in the lack of ease of doing of business. Any firm looking to grow soon runs into a maze of rules and regulations and corrupt bureaucrats appointed by both state and central government. Jobs are created when small firms start to grow big and recruit more people.

As an OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) research paper points out: “SMEs (small- and medium-sized enterprises) account for 60 to 70 per cent of jobs in most OECD countries, with a particularly large share in Italy and Japan, and a relatively smaller share in the United States. Throughout, they also account for a disproportionately large share of new jobs, especially in those countries which have displayed a strong employment record, including the United States and the Netherlands. Some evidence points also to the importance of age, rather than size, in job creation: young firms generate more than their share of employment.”

Hence, jobs are created when small firms grow. And that clearly isn’t happening in India. The labour laws continue to remain as screwed up as ever. And so does the ease of doing business. On that front Shah’s government has barely managed to move.

When it comes to creating jobs, the government can at best act as a facilitator and help the private sector and individuals create jobs. But that facilitation is easier said than done.

Postscript: I recently did a podcast with the writer Amit Varma who is currently the editor of the Pragati magazine, on The Coming Jobs Crisis. Most of what I spoke was based on my new book India’s Big Government-The Intrusive State and How It is Hurting Us. You can listen to the podcast here.

The column originally appeared in Equitymaster on May 29, 2017.