Retail trade is an employment spinner, too

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service activities employed 7.35% during the review period.

In the non-agricultural activities like retail, manufacturing, real estate and hotels and restaurants, the maximum number of workers were engaged in manufacturing with 25.48 million people followed by 25.14 million workers in retail trade and 7.49 million in education. These three activity groups accounted for about 65% of the total employment in the non-agricultural sector.

Among the agricultural activities, 87% (5.29 million) were involved in rearing animals — as high as 94.3% of the total establishments in this sector were in rural areas.

An interesting finding of the Census is that rural areas had more of the establishments under non-agricultural activities like retail trade, manufacturing, hotels, real estate and education at 55.46 % compared to 44.54% in urban areas.

The situation in the states

A state-wise distribution of all establishments shows that bigger states have comparatively smaller size establishments. Around 5.5 % of total establishments in Arunachal Pradesh and about 11 % of establishments in Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu employ about 10 workers. The all-India average is about 1.5 % of the total establishments employ about 10 workers.

The report further stated that 64.24 % of the total workers worked in establishments that employed less than six workers. Establishments employing 6-9 workers employed 10.24 % of the total workforce while those employing more than 10 workers gave jobs to 25.52 % people during 1998-2005.

Among the states, Tamil Nadu had the maximum number of agricultural establishments (1.09 million) constituting 17.99 % of all agri establishments in the country. It was followed by Andhra Pradesh (16.15%) and Kerala (14.48%).

In case of own account establishments in agricultural activities too Tamil Nadu had the highest number of establishments (19.19%) followed by Andhra Pradesh (16.03%) and Kerala (15.84%).

Andhra Pradesh provided maximum employment in the rural areas (13.14 % of the total rural employment), followed by West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, UP, Kerala and Maharashtra . Among the urban-employment providers, Maharashtra topped the list providing the maximum employment at 14.10 % of total urban employment.

In rural areas, Gujarat (12.90%), Andhra Pradesh (18.71%), Kerala (11.15%) and Tamil Nadu (14.81%) provided for more than 11 % of the total employment in rural agricultural establishments with Andhra Pradesh employing the maximum number at 1.90 million.