Employment Growth

Employment Growth
The Union Labour & Employment Minister Shri Mallikarjun Kharge has informed the Rajya Sabha that reliable estimates of employment and unemployment are obtained through quinquennial labour force surveys conducted by National Sample Survey Office. As per the two most recent surveys, employment estimated on usual status basis has increased from 459.10 million in 2004-05 to 465.48 million in 2009-10 which shows that about 6.4 million persons were able to find employment during the period 2004-05 to 2009-10. The number of youth job seekers in the age group of 15-29 year, all of whom may not necessarily be unemployed, registered with employment exchanges as on 31-12-2008 was 270 million.
In order to bridge the employment gap and to harness the benefit of demographic dividend, Government of India has undertaken skill development in a big way.
The coordinated Action Plan for Skill Development has set a target of 500 million skilled persons by the year 2022, and all concerned Ministries and Departments have been mandated to undertake skill development programmes accordingly. All the Government (ITIs) Industrial Training Institutes are being modernized. New Govt. and Private ITIs and ITCs are being setup to augment training capacity. A new scheme, titled Skill Development Initiatives has been started to train one million persons in five years and then one million every year in short term modular employable skills. In addition, Government has also been implementing Employment generation Programme some of which are Swarnjayanti Shahari Rojgar Yojna, Swarnjayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojna, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Guarantee Act and Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme.
The Minister was replying to a written question in the Rajya Sabha today.