Issues in the Indian Labor Market: Insights from PLFS Survey

Post-demonetization years followed by the introduction of GST have been characterized by “jobless growth”. The shrill debate in the absence of credible official data of the magnitude and character, the erstwhile National Sample Survey (NSS) database became controversial and even served fodder for electoral discourses. For controversial reasons the NDA Government withheld the release of the revised and refined Periodic Labor Force Survey (PLFS) till April 2019. This article analyses the PLFS data and the NSS data to bring out the contemporary features of labor market and traces the temporal patterns during 2004/05 – 2017/18. It shows that there is not only “job crisis”, but rising unemployment and deterioration in the conditions of employment.