Textile workers worst hit in Covid, worker erosion most in Uttarakhand: Govt data

To borrow a Shakespearean term, the pandemic will remain the “most unkindest cut of all” in independent India’s economic history and according to the latest Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) data, released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) on February 6, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Kerala, and Karnataka were the five top states to suffer the sharpest decline in “total persons engaged” in the manufacturing sector in 2020-21.

The ASI survey is a significant database of industrial activities in the organised manufacturing sector. It covers establishments employing 20 or more workers with power, and 40 or more workers without power.

It revealed while the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand went through the biggest trauma by suffering a 11% dip in “total persons engaged” in manufacturing in the worst-hit pandemic year, those in Jharkhand contracted by 8.9%, West Bengal by 8.3%, Kerala by 8% and Karnataka by 7.8%.

“Total persons engaged” is the sum of workers directly employed by an enterprise, its supervisory or managerial workers and the unpaid family members who might be engaged in it.

If the absolute number of workers through job loss is considered Tamil Nadu was the worst sufferer. It lost 174,000 employment. The states to follow in this metric were Karnataka (loss of 84,436), Maharashtra (79,367) and West Bengal (60,000) in the same financial year (2020-21) which was the worst-hit year of the pandemic.

Government data indicate that the states that staged the sharpest rebound in terms of employment by the manufacturing sector were Jharkhand with 13%, Maharashtra with 9.2% and Karnataka with 8.3%.

If one considers the cumulative figures of the country, employment in manufacturing in 2020-21 shrank by 3.2% and reached 1.61 crore. It subsequently recovered by 7% to reach 1.72 crore. The degree of suffering was not uniform in the rural and urban sector. While urban employment contracted 6% in 2020-21 as workers began going back to their native villages, rural employment marginally increased by 0.3% in that year. In the following year (2021-22), rural and urban employment rose by 5.2% and 8.5% respectively.

However, in some states the workforce contracted in FY22 when compared to FY20. These states were Delhi (13.6%), Assam (11%), Kerala (8.9%), Uttarakhand (5.2%), Himachal Pradesh (5.1%), West Bengal (3.1%), Tamil Nadu (1.4%) and Karnataka (0.1%). Worse, data reveal that employment in the manufacturing sector in these states is still to climb to the pre-pandemic level.

Among the industries that lost maximum workers were in 2020-21 were apparel (17.3%), textiles (4.9%) and non-metallic mineral products (4.2%).
Among the top 10 sectors with the largest workforce, as many as five sectors including basic metals (1.2%) and machinery and equipment (0.2%) went through a contraction in employment.

Among the industries that witnessed the highest growth in workforce in 2021-22 were apparel (13.2%), rubber and plastics products (12.3%) and machinery and equipment (9.9%).

Unfortunately, the workers in the manufacturing sector in 2021-22 remained below their pre-pandemic level of 2019-20 in 10 out of a total of 29 sectors. Among the sectors in this list featured transport equipment (14.1%), beverages (11.7%), printing and production of recorded media (11%), leather and related products (9.7%) and wearing apparel (6.4%).

“The ASI results for the year 2021-22 exhibits the resilience shown by the Indian manufacturing sector and tells the unique turn-around story of the Indian manufacturing sector after the adverse effect of pandemic witnessed in 2020-21 in terms of output and input contraction and also a marginal fall in employment,” the MoSPI said in a statement.