Presenting a depressed job market in the country with employment growth rate declining by one per cent annually during 1994-2000, Economic Survey sought promotion of labour intensive sectors which it said can create additional 20 million jobs during the Tenth Plan.

The Survey said, "Decline in growth rate of employment during 1990s was associated with a comparatively higher growth rate in GDP, indicating a decline in the labour intensity of production."

The absolute number of unemployed has grown during this period, it said adding the decline was largely due to a near stagnation of employment in agriculture whose share in total employment dropped substantially from 60 per cent in 1993-94 to 57 per cent in 1999-00.

The survey pointed out that the employment in the organised sector was hardly 8.34 per cent, of which public sector was 5.77 per cent and private sector stood only at 2.58 per cent in the total employment generated.

Organised sector employment as on March 2001 stood at 27.8 million of which public sector employment stood at 19.1 million and private sector 8.7 million, survey said.

There was a marginal decrease of 0.6 per cent in employment in the organised sector in 2001 as compared to 2000 with employment in public sector declining by 0.9 per cent and in private sector rising merely by 0.1 per cent during 2001, it added.

The data from 939 employment exchanges in the country indicated that as on September last year, the number of job seekers registered with them stood at 4.16 crore of which around 70 per cent were literate.

Maximum number of job seekers awaiting employment were from West Bengal at 6.36 million while minimum were in the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli at 6000 and Arunachal Pradesh at 20,000. Gujarat took the lead in maximum placement whereas Uttar Pradesh topped in registration, survey said, adding placement effected by the employment exchanges at all India level during 2001 was recorded at 169,000 as against 304,000 vacancies notified during the period.

The Survey further pointed that employment elasticity of output was down from 0.52 over the years 1983 to 1993-94 to 0.16 during 1993-94 to 1999-00. This decline was observed in most sectors except transport, financial services and real estate.

The organised private manufacturing sector was identified as having higher employment generation potential than the public sector though it constitutes only 1.5 per cent of the total employment in the country and 16.5 per cent of total manufacturing employment.

The Survey identified agriculture, trade, restaurant and hotels including tourism, education, health, small and medium enterprises in the rural non-farm sector and transport and construction as main employment generating activities.

PTI