Economic Slowdown Caused Job Losses: SBI

The economic slowdown has adversely impacted employment generation in the country as nearly 16 lakh less jobs are projected to be created in FY20 compared to 89.7 lakh fresh jobs in FY19, a report said.

According to the SBI research report- Ecowrap, there is a decline in remittances in a few states like Assam and Rajasthan, reflecting downsizing of contractual labourers.

"In FY19, India had created 89.7 lakh new payrolls as per the EPFO data. In FY20, as per current projected this number could be at least 15.8 lakh lower," the report said.

The EPFO data primarily covers low paid jobs as the salary is capped at Rs 15,000 per month. As per the calculation done by the report, during April-October 2019, the actual net new payroll was 43.1 lakh which annualised comes out to be 73.9 lakh for FY20.

The EPFO data does not cover government jobs, state government jobs and private jobs as such data have moved to National Pension Scheme (NPS), beginning 2004.

"Interestingly, even in the NPS category, state and central government are supposed to create close to 39,000 jobs less in FY20 as per current trends," the report said.

It said a sample of data on remittances by migrant labourers to selected states in the last one year showed that there is a decline in remittances in states like Assam, Bihar, Rajasthan, Odisha and UP.