18% GDP Growth Necessary A Year To Meet India's Current Job Requirement: Report

India’s gross domestic product (GDP) will need to grow at 18 per cent a year to meet the country’s current job requirement, said ACCESS Development Services in its 'state of India's livelihoods' report.   

The report highlighted that since 1980, India’s annual GDP growth has mostly stayed in the range of four to eight per cent, but over the same period, the employment growth has been shrinking.

"While Indian workers are indeed transitioning from agriculture, albeit at a slower pace than might have been hoped, they are not moving to manufacture at anything like the scale envisaged," the report added. 

It stated that the majority of the new jobs will be in large urban-industrial centres, however, there is a need to push the industry to provide better contractual arrangements which foster learning and progression in the company.

The report further stated that India has 63 million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) employing close to 110 million workers, but the vast majority of these firms are ‘micro’ - investing less than ten million, have a turnover of less than 50 million and hire less than 20 workers.  

Additionally, another 32 per cent of the micro sector are firms that have only two or three workers and companies with four workers or above (up to 19) comprise only six to seven per cent of all firms, however, owing to constraints both in terms of policy and opportunities, it is unable to unleash its employment potential. 

The report suggested that micro sectors need to be seen as the main engine of employment is to overcome spatial imbalance between rural and urban as well as the role of labour-intensive trades in local and craft-based markets.