Non-farm jobs to slump by 25 per cent in FY13-FY19: Crisil

Slowing economic growth and a drop in labour intensity across industries and services will result in non-farm jobs falling by over 25 per cent during FY13-FY19, according to a report by rating agency Crisil.

"Non-farm employment will decrease more than 25 per cent to 38 million in FY13-FY19 compared with 52 million seen in FY05-FY12," said the report released on Tuesday.

"That's because fewer jobs are being created with the economy treading a lower-growth path and labour intensity is declining across industry and services," it added.

As a consequence, an additional 12 million people will be redirected to farms in the next seven years, which is in sharp contrast to a decline of 37 million in agriculture employment during FY05-F12 period.

"It is desirable to pull more and more people out of agriculture since it is a low-productivity sector, with only a 14 per cent share in GDP, but around 49 per cent share in employment," the report said.

"The old trend of migration from agriculture will reverse, with fewer non-farm job opportunities coming in the way of achieving this," Crisil president for research Mukesh Agarwal said.

Crisil pointed out that the ability of relatively labour-intensive sectors such as manufacturing to absorb workers has diminished due to rising automation and complicated employment laws.

As per the report, the employment elasticity of manufacturing, or the percentage increase in employment for every percentage point increase in manufacturing GDP, deteriorated sharply to an average 0.17 in the seven years to FY12 from 0.68 in the seven years to FY05.