SBI economist defends ‘7-crore jobs creation in India’ claim

Kolkata: State Bank of India’s chief economist defended his research on India’s employment, which showed that there are nearly 7 crore non-farm jobs in the country, which is even acknowledged by the Economic Survey.

“Critics are now hailing the success of demonetisation and GST as formalising large parts of our informal economy. It also implies that formal employment (that was previously informal) with defined social security benefits is a blessing in disguise for such employees,” SBI Chief Economist Soumya Kanti Ghosh and Pulak Ghosh of IIM Bangalore wrote in a report. The authors, in their original research using data from the EPFO, ESI and the National Pension System (NPS), had said that millions of jobs were being created in the formal sector. Critics said that the number of payroll created out of EPFO data at 7 million is larger than 6.6 million skilled graduates and hence there is a lack of job seekers.