Workers and Employment

What is employment, and who is a worker?

To answer this, it helps to recall how a nation's output is measured. When a farmer grows food grains and raw materials, cotton is turned into cloth in mills, and lorries carry goods from place to place, all of these add value. The total money value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a year is its gross domestic product (GDP). If we then account for foreign trade — subtracting the value of imports and adding the value of exports — we get a net earning from abroad. This earning may be positive (exports exceed imports), negative (imports exceed exports) or zero (they are equal). Adding this net foreign earning to GDP gives the gross national product (GNP).

Economic activities and workers

Activities that contribute to gross national product are called economic activities. Everyone engaged in an economic activity, in any capacity — high or low — is a worker. Workers include those who temporarily stay away from work because of illness, injury, bad weather, festivals or religious functions, as well as those who assist the main workers. A common mistake is to count only those paid by an employer as workers; in fact, the self-employed are workers too.

The nature of employment in India

Employment in India is many-sided. Some people find work all through the year while others are employed for only a few months, and many do not receive fair wages. When the number of workers is estimated, everyone engaged in economic activity is counted as employed. During 2017-18, India had a workforce of about 471 million. Because most Indians live in villages, the rural share of this workforce is larger — rural workers make up roughly two-thirds of it. Men dominate: about 77 per cent of workers are men and the rest are women (with child labourers counted within their respective sexes). Women form about one-fourth of the rural workforce and only about one-fifth of the urban workforce.

The undercounting of women's work

Women carry out tasks such as cooking, fetching water and fuelwood, and working on family farms, often without any payment in cash or kind. Because such unpaid work is not recognised, these women are frequently left out of the count of workers. Many economists argue that this recognition is unfair and that such women should also be classified as workers.