Nearly 2 lakh jobs across nine sectors were lying vacant in Q1, says survey

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Nine sectors – manufacturing, construction, trade, transport, education, health, accommodation and restaurants, IT/BPOs and financial services – had 1.87 lakh job vacancies in the first quarter of the current fiscal year. According to the revamped quarterly employment survey (QES), the lack of skilled labour was the biggest reason, accounting for nearly 40% of vacancies. The vacancies were 0.6% of the total jobs offered by these sectors, nearly 3 crore combined, till April-June 2021-22.

Most of the vacancies were reported from manufacturing, which accounted for half of these vacancies at 99,429 jobs, the Business Standard reported. The biggest reason for vacancies in the manufacturing sector was lack of skilled labour, accounting for nearly 94.8% of the total vacancies. Around 4.5% of establishments in this sector reported vacancies, the same proportion of companies in the IT/BPO sector also reported having vacancies. The major reasons cited by the report for the vacancies were clubbed into three categories – ‘Resignation’, ‘Retirement’, ‘Other’, with the non-availability of skilled workers being included in the third category.

Vacancies in other sectors

‘Retirement’ was cited as the biggest reason for vacancies in the sectors of transport and education, while ‘Resignations’ was the biggest factor in unfilled jobs in the health sector as well as in the sectors of accommodation and restaurant.

The Business Standard quoted SP Mukherjee, the chairman of the expert group on All India Surveys, as saying that the respondents, i.e., the companies from these sectors, cited absence of skilled workers as the main reason, other than retirement and resignations, for the vacancies. He added that the survey findings implied that the ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship has to focus on this area.

An interesting finding reported in the survey was that only 18% of the establishments provided formal skill development programmes, if only for their own employees, and most of these training were reported from the companies in the IT/BPO sector 29.8%, followed by financial services 22.6% and education 21.1%.