A Reserve Bank of India report released on Monday stated that India created a provisional 46.7 million jobs in the financial year ending March 2024, raising total employment to 643.3 million. Employment growth reached 6% that fiscal year, up from 3.2% the previous year. Traditionally, the RBI report provides historical data, but this report included a provisional estimate of productivity for the 2023/24 financial year based on current information.
On Monday, however, the central bank announced that, using the data at hand, it is making an attempt to estimate the productivity of the entire economy provisionally for the first time, for the fiscal year 2023–2024.
The data was released in response to a Citibank analysis published last week, which predicted that growth of nearly 7 per cent would only generate 8–9 million jobs in India, short of the 11–12 million needed. “Even 7% GDP growth might not be able to fulfill the job requirement over the next decade,” Citi’s chief India economist Samiran Chakraborty wrote in the note.
In a separate statement, the federal labour department too countered Citi’s report to say its estimates suggest an average of over 20 million employment opportunities per year were created between 2017-18 to 2021-22.
(with inputs from Reuters)