NEW DELHI: India needs to create 90 million non-farm jobs between 2023 and 2030 to absorb new workers and an additional 30 million workers who could move from farm work to more productive non-farm sectors, McKinsey Global Institute said in a report Wednesday.
“To absorb this influx, the country will need about 12 million additional gainful non-farm jobs every year starting in fiscal-year 2023, triple the four million non-farm jobs created annually between 2012 and 2018. If an additional 55 million women enter the labour force, at least partially correcting historical under-representation, India’s job creation imperative would be greater," said the report titled India’s Turning Point, an economic agenda to spur growth and jobs.
Post the covid-19 pandemic, annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 8% to 8.5% will be required with continued strong productivity growth and faster employment growth than in the past, it said.
“Choosing a high-growth path that creates 90 million gainful jobs requires India to simultaneously increase its rate of employment growth sharply and maintain its historically strong productivity growth. To achieve 8% to 8.5% GDP growth, net employment would need to grow by 1.5% per year from 2023 to 2030, similar to the average net employment growth rate of 1.5% that India achieved from 2000 to 2012, but much higher than the flat net employment (growth rate) experienced from 2013 to 2018," it said. India will also need to maintain productivity growth at 6.5% to 7% per year, as it achieved from 2013 to 2018.
The two objectives, employment generation and growth, are not contradictory and “indeed, employment cannot grow sustainably without high productivity growth and vice versa".