Q.What is meant by the occupational distribution of labour? Describe the pattern found in Andhra Pradesh and explain the structural problem it reveals.

How a workforce splits across the three sectors tells us a region's development stage; in Andhra Pradesh the split reveals an over-dependence on low-productivity agriculture.

Meaning. The occupational distribution of labour is the way the working population is distributed across the three sectors of the economy — primary (agriculture and allied), secondary (industry) and tertiary (services). It is a key indicator of a region's stage of development: a developing agrarian economy has most workers in the primary sector; as development proceeds, that share falls while the secondary and tertiary shares rise.

The Andhra Pradesh pattern.

1. The workforce is heavily concentrated in the primary sector — a very large proportion of workers are cultivators and agricultural labourers.
2. Within the farm workforce, the share of agricultural labourers has tended to be higher than the all-India proportion (and the share of cultivators lower), reflecting unequal and often uneconomically small land holdings that push rural workers into wage labour.
3. Census data across 2001–2011 showed cultivators declining and agricultural labourers rising. …

Defining occupational distribution but not linking AP's farm-heavy workforce to agriculture's much smaller income share; confusing disguised unemployment (too …