India’s ‘Salaried Class’ Shrinks By 2.7 Percentage During Pandemic: Survey

There is much to lament in India’s post-Covid job market, where recovery has been painfully slow. However, official data suggests that in the salaried sector, the participation of religious minorities – Muslims, Sikhs,, and Christians, in that order – has been most severely affected.

The Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation’s latest PLFS (Periodic Labor Force Survey) – which covers the period from July 2020 to June 2021 and was released earlier this year – at least partially captures the impact of the lockdown, and its immediate aftermath, on salaried jobs across the sector.

The survey defined regular/salaried employees as a person who has worked in another’s farm or non-farm enterprise (both household and non-household) and, in return, has received salary or wages on a regular basis (ie on the basis of daily or periodic renewal of the work contract). This category includes both full-time and part-time paid apprentices.

According to the data, by 2020-21, the share of India’s salaried class in the workforce declined by about 2 percentage points. In 2019-20, about 23 percent of the workforce earned a regular salary or wage, but in 2020-21, only 21 percent did.

Since the survey is conducted between July and June every year, the 2019-20 survey includes values ​​for the April-June 2020 quarter, when the most severe lockdown was in effect.

The year before that, the share of the salaried class in India’s labor force actually rose by one percentage point, from 22.8 in 2017-18 to 23.8 in 2018-19. Therefore, if we base all these data, it can be estimated that India’s salaried class shrank by 2.7 percentage points during the years when the economy was under pressure under the pandemic.

Since the survey is conducted between July and June every year, the 2019-20 survey included values ​​for the April-June 2020 quarter, when the most severe lockdown was in effect.

The year before that, the share of the salaried class in India’s labor force actually rose by one percentage point, from 22.8 in 2017-18 to 23.8 in 2018-19. Therefore, if we base all these data, it can be estimated that India’s salaried class shrank by 2.7 percentage points during the years when the economy was under pressure under the pandemic.