Employment: Growth, Informalisation and Other Issues

Who counts as a worker, the worker-population ratio, self-employed, regular and casual workers, the workforce by sector, formal and informal work, and kinds of unemployment.

Key ideas

• A worker is anyone engaged in an economic activity that adds to GNP, paid or self-employed.
• By status, workers are self-employed, regular salaried employees or casual wage labourers; casual workers are the most vulnerable.
• Most workers are in the primary sector, though its share has fallen as industry and services grew.
• The formal sector has public establishments and private ones with 10 or more hired workers; the rest is the informal sector with little protection.
• Unemployment can be open (no work at all), disguised (more people on a job than needed) or seasonal (no work between farm seasons).
• Jobless growth is output rising without matching jobs; casualisation is the shift towards casual wage work.
• MGNREGA (2005) promises up to 100 days of wage work a year to rural households.

Remember

Watch out

• Calling a farmer on his own land a casual labourer (he is self-employed).
• Mixing up disguised unemployment (too many on a job) and seasonal unemployment (no work between seasons).
• Putting a private firm with fewer than 10 hired workers in the formal sector.

Worked example