Industrial Wage Growth Moderated For The Fifth Straight Year In FY18, Shows ASI Data
Industrial wage growth moderated for the fifth consecutive year in FY18, shows the latest Annual Survey Of Industries
Wage growth across India’s industrial sector moderated for the fifth consecutive year in 2017-18, shows the Annual Survey of Industries released by the government on Wednesday.
The survey is the widest study of organised manufacturing in the country and covers close to 2.4 lakh units.
The latest survey shows that per capita wage growth for industrial workers rose by just 6 percent in FY18 as compared to 6.2 percent in FY17. Wage growth has fallen for the fifth year and is well below the peak of 15 percent in FY13, the data shows.
Per capita wage has been calculated by dividing ‘wages to workers’ by the ‘number of workers’ for every year.
While wage growth fell, the number of workers employed across these units rose at the fastest pace since FY11.
Total workers increased 4.8 percent in FY18 1.22 crore in FY18 from 1.16 crore in FY17. The pick-up in employment growth between FY17 and FY18, however, was negligible.
The number of workers is an average number obtained by dividing man-days worked by the number of days the factory had worked during the reference year, as per the Ministry of Statistics
The top five most employment intensive industries in FY18 accounted for 45 percent of all industrial jobs. These industries were textiles, wearing apparel, food products, metallic mineral products and basic metals.
However, employment trends in these industries presented a mixed picture. While the apparel industry saw moderation in job creation, the basic metals industry saw a consistent improvement in the number of workers employed.
While the data gives few clues about what is happening in the economy at present, it suggests that employment and wages have been under pressure for some time now.
The Periodic Labour Force Survey released earlier this year had also suggested rising unemployment, with the unemployment rate in India, across urban and rural areas, pegged at 6.1 percent between July 2017 and June 2018,
More recent employment data is not available. A recent BloombergQuint study of industries with high elasticity of employment had suggested that key sectors have seen a deceleration in growth in the last year. Overall economic growth, as measured by Gross Value Added, has also declined sharply to 4.9 percent.