Occupational Structure of Workers in Rural Andhra Pradesh

The paper examines the determinants of workforce structure with respect to status and sector. It develops multinomial regression model by using National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) household survey data to analyse factors that influence types of employment of workers in rural Andhra Pradesh. The variables considered for the study are total assets (land cultivated), social group, religion, educational level, age (experience), and other regional factors of the workers. The selected variables in the model explain about 80 per cent of variation in the type of employment of a worker. The education level has significant impact on the choice of non-agricultural employment, especially in services and regular employment, in rural Andhra Pradesh. As expected, income, size of land holding, state of being regular employee in non-agriculture is negatively associated with part-time employment compared to full-time employment. On the other hand, the probability of self-employees in agriculture is higher in part-time work. Surprisingly, workers with technical education are more likely to be part-time employees. The probability of women workers to be employed as part-time workers is higher than that for male workers. There is significant increase in weekly wage rates of the non-agricultural workers as educational level increases, but there has been no significant increase in weekly wage earnings of casual labourers as educational level increases. There are significant wage differentials across different types of employment, by educational level of workers by social group, and among male and female, workers.