IT is an established fact that rapid growth rate of GDP alone cannot address the requirement of massive additional job creation. But, the capitalists and the governments have adopted the theory that rapid growth rate alone can achieve it. The result is there for all to see.

India's count of the unemployed is likely to increase from 18.3 to 18.9 million between 2017 and 2019 and the share as well as the absolute numbers of those in vulnerable employment is also likely to increase. The share of informal jobs, for all sectors and non- agricultural sectors, are put at approximately 90 percent and 80 percent, respectively. A recent World Bank Report titled “Jobless Growth?” paints quite a bleak picture: “The demographic transition is swelling the ranks of the working-age population across most of South Asia. In this context, keeping employment rates constant would require massive job creation. But there is a widespread perception that increases in the working-age population have been offset by declining employment rates, and that women accounted for the most of the decline (page 29).” Based on its estimate of the number of people aged 15 and above, the Report projects that to even maintain constant employment rates up to 2025, India will need to create at least 8 million jobs per year. We may also note that India's own official estimates of the net new entrants in the job market at the current juncture have been put between 10 to 12 million every year. BJP manifesto promised to create 10 – 20 million jobs per year but only created 4 lakhs jobs in 2016-17.

As per the official estimates, there is a need to create 10-12 million jobs every year to absorb the potential entrants to the labour force. The latest estimates, available from the Labour Bureau, paint an extremely depressing picture with respect to the pace of job creation. Apart from being nowhere near what would be required to facilitate near full employment, there has been a staggering decline by about 90 percent in creation of new jobs; the figure for new jobs has come down from about 11 lakhs in 2010 to 1.5 lakhs in 2016.

Even the latest Economic Survey of the Government of India acknowledged serious negative fallouts of these measures for the different dimensions of the economy, including the employment generation. Likewise, according to the CMIE – CPHS data about 1.5 million jobs were lost, during the first four months of 2017, which was attributed to Demonetization. Several industry and manufacturing associations and field studies from individual researchers reported very significant job losses due to the shocks of Demonetization and GST during 2017 and 2018. There were reports of large scale retrenchment of workers, substantial instances of reverse migration (from urban to rural areas) and increase in the employment demand under MGNREGA, etc. If we take all these in conjunction with the trend reported by the Labour Bureau annual surveys between 2011–12 and 2015-16, it is very obvious that the Modi-led BJP government is clearly pro-corporate and against the labour and employment generation.

It appears that those already employed have now been registered due to the recent government policies. For example, prior to 2016 only enterprises with more than 20 employees on the rolls required mandatory registration under the EPFO, which was brought down to 10 in 2016; thus, because of the definitional shift there is an illusion of increased formal jobs, when in reality it is not any net increase in jobs. But, Modi government is trying to interpret it as massive employment generation.