Overall employment in export sector rising: survey

Overall employment in select sectors, including textiles and apparels, leather, metals, automobiles, gems and jewellery, transport, IT/BPO as also handloom and powerloom, continued to maintain an upward momentum during the April-June 2010 quarter as well.

Overall level of employment in the eight sectors affected by the economic slowdown increased by 1.62 lakh in June 2010 from the level in March 2010, according to the seventh quarterly survey report on the `Effect of Economic Slowdown on Employment in India" brought out by the labour bureau of the ministry of labour and employment.

The IT/BPO sector recorded the maximum increase in employment of 1.29 lakh during the April-June 2010 quarter, followed by 0.51 lakh in automobile industry, 0.45 lakh in the metal industry, 0.21 lakh in leather and 0.04 lakh in gems and jewellery.

In the textile sector, on the other hand, the level of employment declined by 0.63 lakh in June 2010 from the March 2010 level. The transport sector saw a decline in employment of 0.21 while the handloom/powerloom sector saw a marginal decline in employment of around 0.04 lakh.

The textile sector also saw a drop in employment level in the previous April-June quarter (2009) as well, showing the structural or seasonal nature of the level of employment in the sector. Employment in the textile sector dropped to the tune of 1.54 lakh between March and June 2009.

The increase in employment level; has been of a permanent nature as direct employment saw the maximum increase of 1.22 lakh against a 0.40 lakh increase in the contract category of workers at overall level during the April-June 2010 period.

Overall employment in the export oriented units during the April-June 2010 quarter increased by 1.77 lakh whereas it showed a decline of 0.15 lakh in the non-exporting units during the period June.

On a year-on-year basis, overall employment in the export sector increased by 1.36 million with highest increase of 8.54 lakh reported in the IT/BPO sector, followed by textiles (1.52 lakh), metals (1.37 lakh) automobiles (1.10 lakh) and gems and jewellery (0.93 lakh).