Labour and Employment Minister Bhupender Yadav today released the report of first quarter of Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) part (April to June 2021), of the All-India Quarterly Establishment-based Employment Survey (AQEES) prepared by the Labour Bureau.

The AQEES has been taken up by the Labour Bureau to provide frequent (quarterly) updates about the employment and related variables of establishments, in both organised and unorganised segments of nine selected sectors. These sectors altogether account for a majority of the total employment in the non-farm establishments. These nine selected sectors are manufacturing, construction, trade, transport, education, health, accommodation & restaurant, IT/BPO and financial services.

Announcing the results Mr Yadav said that the estimated total employment in the nine selected sectors from the first round of QES is approximately 3.08 crores against a total of 2.37 crores in these sectors taken collectively, as reported in the sixth Economic Census (2013-14) reflecting a growth rate of 29 per cent.

According to the report, out of the total employment estimated in the selected nine sectors, manufacturing accounted for nearly 41 per cent followed by education with 22 per cent and health at 8 per cent. Trade as well as and IT/BPO each engaged 7 per cent of the total estimated number of workers.

Sharing the findings on the pandemic induced employment retrenchment/decline, the Labour minister informed that it was found that the impact was evident in 27 per cent of the establishments however the silver lining was that 81 per cent of the workers received full wages during the lock-down period of between March 25 and June 30, 2020.

The first round of the QES revealed that the most impressive growth of 152 per cent had been recorded in the IT/BPO sector, while growth rates in health was 77 per cent, education 39 per cent, manufacturing 22 per cent, transport 68 per cent and construction 42 per cent. However, employment in trade came down by 25 per cent and accommodation & restaurant the decline was by 13 per cent. Financial services saw a growth rate in employment of 48 per cent.

Nearly 90 per cent of the establishments have been estimated to work with less than 100 workers, the corresponding figure during EC 6 being 95 percent. Nearly 35 percent of the IT/ BPO establishments worked with at least 100 workers, including about 13.8 percent engaging 500 workers or more. In the Health sector, 18 percent of the establishments had 100 or more workers. The over-all participation of female workers stood at 29 per cent, slightly lower than 31 per cent reported during 6th EC. 

There are two components under AQEES, QES and Area Frame Establishment Survey (AFES). QES has been initiated to compile relevant data from about 12,000 establishments selected through a sampling design to represent each of the nine sectors within each State/Union Territory, as also each size-class (range of number of workers) within each sector-State/UT.

AFES covers the unorganised segment (with less than 10 workers) through a sample survey. AQEES will provide a consolidated picture with both the organised and the unorganised segments of the non-farm economy. The first round of QES had a reference date of April 1, 2021 for the different items of information about an establishment.