CBSE Class 11 Economics Employment Notes

Worker:

A worker is an individual who is in some employment to earn a living.

Need to do Work:

People work for the following reasons:
To earn money for survival
Employment provides feeling of self worth & self esteem
It helps in the development of the nation 

Types of Workers:

Self Employed: these are the people working in their own business or profession. They earn profit as a reward for their services.
Hired Workers: these are the people hired by others & are paid wages or salaries as a reward for their services.
o Casual Workers: these are like daily wagers, not on permanent rolls of the employer, & do not get social security benefits. E.g. construction workers.
o Regular Workers: these are hired on permanent basis & are entitled to social security benefits.

Important Terms:

GDP: Sum of total goods & services produced in an economy during an accounting year is known as GDP.
GNP: When we add our foreign earning to GDP, we get GNP.
Economic Activities: Those activities which contribute to the gross national product
Work Force: refers to the no. of actually working
Labor Supply: it refers to supply of labour corresponding to different wage rates
Labour Force: it refers to the no. of persons actually willing to work or working. It is not related to wage rate.
Labor Force = Workforce + No. of persons unemployed
 

Rate of Unemployment: No. of Unemployed persons/Labor Force X 100
Workforce Participation Ratio: Workforce/ Total Population X 100  It refers to the percentage of population actually participating in production activity. It is also known as worker population ratio.

Size of Workforce in India

Around 40% population in India comprise the workforce
70% of the workforce comprise of male workers because men are able to earn higher incomes, so families discourage female members from taking up jobs.
70% of the workforce is found in rural areas & only 30% in urban areas because bulk of the jobs is in rural areas. It implies maximum people are employed in farming & allied activities.
For every 100 urban females, only about 14 are engaged in some economic activities & this is 30 for every 100 women in rural areas. This is because, amongst most families in urban areas, job work for women is still considered forbidden. Higher employment among rural women is because of their poverty.

Self Employed & Hired Workers

42% workers are self employed & 58% are hired in urban areas.
56% workers are self employed & 44% are hired in rural areas. The reason is that in urban areas people look for skilled jobs in offices & factories while in rural areas, family farm are most attractive proposition of employment.
51% of the male workers are self employed & 49% are hired.
55% of the female workers are self employed & 45% are hired. Owing to family & social constraints, mobility of women workers in search of job is less compared to that of men workers.

Occupational Structure:

Primary sector includes agriculture & allied activities, mining & quarrying.
Secondary sector includes manufacturing & construction.
Tertiary sector includes trade, transport, storage & services.

As the economy develops, labor moves from primary sector towards industry & services sector. In this process, workers migrate from rural to urban areas. Finally, service sector expands & secondary sector starts loosing its share of employment. The related data are as follows:

Distribution by Industry: 60% in primary, 17% in secondary & 23% in tertiary sector.
Distribution by Area:

• Urban areas: Primary 10%, Secondary 31% & tertiary 59%
• Rural areas: Primary 77%, Secondary 11% & tertiary 12%

Distribution by Gender:

• Male workers: Primary 54%, secondary 18% & tertiary 28%
• Female workers: Primary 75%, secondary 12% & tertiary 13% In formalization of Indian Workforce

Casualization of Workforce: It refers to a situation when the percentage of casually hired workers in the  otal workforce tends to rise over time. It is a process of moving from self employment & regular salaried employment to casual wage works. In India, casualization of workforce has been increasing

 Informalization of Indian Workforce
Employment is broadly classified into two categories:

Formal Sector or Organized Sector
All the public sector units & those private sector units which employ more than 10 hired workers or more are called formal sector establishments.

Informal Sector or Unorganized Sector
All the other enterprises & workers working in those enterprises form the informal sector. It includes farmers, agricultural laborers, and owners of small enterprises & people working in them, self employed who does not have any hired workers & non farm casual wage laborers.

Unemployment: it refers to a situation where people who are able & willing to work do not get work to earn their means of living. 

Types of Unemployment:

Open Unemployment: it refers to a situation wherein worker is willing & able to work, but fails to get any productive job.
Structural Unemployment: it occurs due to the structural changes in the economy. It includes

• Changes in Technology
• Changes in the pattern of Demand

Under Employment: it is that situation in which a worker gets work for less time than the time he can work. It is of two types:

• Visible Under Employment: in this case, people get work for less than the normal hours of working.
• Invisible under employment: in this case people work full time but their income is very low or they have to do those jobs where they cannot make the full use of their abilities.

Frictional Unemployment: it occurs due to imperfections in the mobility of labor across different occupations.
Seasonal Unemployment: it occurs in case of those occupations which are seasonal in nature. In off season there is not much demand for labor. For e.g. agriculture, ice cream factories, woolen garments etc.
Disguised unemployment: in this type, more people are engaged in the work than the people required. The excess of labor which do not add to productivity are called disguised unemployed.

Govt. & Employment Generation
Efforts done by the govt. in generating employment can be classified into two categories as:

Direct Efforts: in this, govt. employs people in various departments for administrative purposes. It also runs industries, hotels, transport, companies, etc. to provide employment directly to the people.
Indirect Efforts: when output of goods & services from the govt. enterprises increase, then the output of private sector who supplies raw material to the govt. sector would also increase & hence increasing the demand for labor.

This is the indirect effort of generating employment by the govt.
Govt. has also started many poverty alleviation & employment generation programs. Some of these are:

NREGA
Food for Work Program
Prime Minister’s Rozgar Yajana
Rural Employment Generation Program

Important Notes for Class 11 Economics Chapter 7 Employment Growth Informalisation and Other Issues

Introduction

People do a variety of work. Some work on farms, in factories, banks, shops and many other workplaces; yet a few others work at home. Work at home includes not only traditional work but also modern jobs like programming work in the IT industry.
People work for ‘earning’ a living. Some people get, or have, money by inheriting it, not working for it.
Having recognised the importance of work, Mahatma Gandhi insisted upon education and training through a variety of works including craft.
It helps us to analyse the contribution made by different industries and sectors towards national income. It also helps us to address many social issues such as exploitation of marginalised sections of the society, child labour etc.

Self-Employed and Hired Workers

Workers who own and operate an enterprise to earn their livelihood are known as self-employed.
Casual wage labourers are casually engaged in others’ farms and, in return, get a remuneration for the work done
When a worker is engaged by someone or an enterprise and paid his or her wages on a regular basis, they are known as regular salaried employees.

Growth and Changing Structure Of Employment

There are two developmental indicators — growth of employment and GDP. Sixty years of planned development have been aimed at expansion of the economy through increase in national output and employment.
During the period 1950–2010, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of India grew positively and was higher than the employment growth.
In the late 1990s: employment growth started declining and reached the level of growth that India had in the early stages of planning. During these years, we also find a widening gap between the growth of GDP and employment.
Distribution of workforce by industrial sectors shows substantial shift from farm work to non-farm work.
In 1972-73, about 74 per cent of workforce was engaged in primary sector and in 2011-12, this proportion has declined to about 50 per cent. Secondary and service sectors are showing promising future for the Indian workforce.
The distribution of workforce in different status indicates that over the last four decades (1972-2012), people have moved from self-employment and regular salaried employment to casual wage work.
Scholars call the process of moving from self-employment and regular salaried employment to casual wage work as casualisation of workforce.

Unemployment

NSSO defines unemployment as a situation in which all those who, owing to lack of work, are not working but either seek work through employment exchanges, intermediaries, friends or relatives or by making applications to prospective employers or express their willingness or availability for work under the prevailing condition of work and remunerations.
There are a variety of ways by which an unemployed person is identified. Economists define unemployed person as one who is not able to get employment of even one hour in half a day.
There are three sources of data on unemployment: Reports of Census of India, National Sample Survey
Organisation’s Reports of Employment and Unemployment Situation and Directorate General of
Employment and Training Data of Registration with Employment Exchanges.
Economists call unemployment prevailing in Indian farms as disguised unemployment.

What is disguised unemployment?
Suppose a farmer has four acres of land and he actually needs only two workers and himself to carry out various operations on his farm in a year, but if he employs five workers and his family members such as his wife and children, this situation is known as disguised unemployment.
When there is no work to do on farms, people go to urban areas and look for jobs. This kind of unemployment is known as seasonal unemployment. This is also a common form of unemployment prevailing in India.

Conclusion

There has been a change in the structure of workforce in India. Newly emerging jobs are found mostly in the service sector.
The expansion of the service sector and the advent of high technology now frequently permit a highly competitive existence for efficient small scale and often individual enterprises or specialist workers side by side with the multinationals.
Outsourcing of work is becoming a common practice.
The traditional notion of the modern factory or office, as a result, has been altering in such a manner that for many the home is becoming the workplace.
All of this change has not gone in favour of the individual worker. The nature of employment has become more informal with only limited availability of social security measures to the workers.
In the last two decades, there has been rapid growth in the gross domestic product, but without simultaneous increase in employment opportunities.
This has forced the government to take up initiatives in generating employment opportunities particularly in the rural areas.