Engineers, physicians, teachers, accountants, analysts among others have lost their job between May and August, stated a report by ET. It is estimated 6.6 million white-collar professional jobs were lost — bringing their employment to the lowest level since 2016, stated the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) said.
This loss wiped off the job creation that took place in this segment.
From a peak of 18.8 million white-collar workers employed in the country during May-August 2019, their employment fell to 12.2 million in the May-August 2020. This is the lowest employment of these professionals since 2016,” CMIE said.
According to CMIE weekly analysis based on the data from the 20th wave of CMIE’s Consumer Pyramids Household Survey released every four month, the biggest loss of jobs among salaried employees was of white-collar professional employees and other employees.
The job loss was among qualified professionals who were employed in some private or government organisation. However, this survey does not include qualified self-employed professional entrepreneurs.
The next highest job loss was among industrial workers, after white-collar professionals. “By a similar year-on-year comparison, they lost five million employees. This translates into a 26 per cent fall in employment among industrial workers over a year,” it said. However, the decline in the employment of industrial workers is likely to be largely in the smaller industrial units.
Luckily, the lockdown did not impact white collar clerical employees which largely includes desk-work employees ranging from secretaries and office clerks to BPO/KPO workers, data-entry operators, and the types.
“Possibly, their work shifted to the work-from-home model,” it said. CMIE data shows this category of workers has not been seeing any growth since 2016. “In fact, it has slid quite sharply since 2018 from about 15 million to less than 12 million by 2020. Interestingly, it did not slide any further during the lockdown,” it added. Lockdown impact: 6.6 million white-collar professional jobs lost; 4-year gain wash off
