Data: Share of Female Workers Fell in IT/BPO & Financial Services While Total Employment Increased by 3.5 Lakh as per 4th QES
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
October 17, 2022
The fourth edition of the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) for the period January to March 2022 was released recently by the government. While the total employment increased by 3.5 lakhs compared to the previous quarter, data indicated that the share of female employees fell in IT/BPO & Financial Services sectors.
The Ministry of Labour & Employment recently released ‘Fourth Round of Quarterly Employment Survey’ (QES) report.  The report is for the January 2022 to March 2022 period. The first round of this report covered the period of April 2021 to June 2021. This report is part of the All-India Quarterly Establishment based Employment Survey (AQEES).
AQEES aims to provide quarterly updates about employment related parameters across selected 9 sectors from non-farm economy. As per the 6 Economic Census (EC), these 9 sectors account for around 85% of the total employment in non-farm units with 10 or more workers. Therefore, the trends in employment across these sectors are expected to be indicative of the larger employment scenario of the economy. The nine (9) sectors are- Manufacturing, Construction, Trade, Transport, Education, Health, Accommodation & Restaurants, Information Technology (IT) & Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), and Financial Services.
Factly’s analysis of the earlier rounds of QES can be read here – Q1, Q2 & Q3.
Information collected for 10.9 thousand units out of 12 thousand allotted samples
A total of 12,038 units were selected for the survey based on ‘Stratified Simple Random Sampling’. These units remain the same across the different rounds of QES.  Out of these units that were selected as sample, 11,732 establishments were visited as part of the 4 round of survey. However, out of these, 823 units were found either closed or non-existing. Therefore, the information was collected from only 10.9 thousand units. Even among these units, 52 units were found to be outside the coverage of the survey.  The total number of units visited in the earlier three rounds of QES were 10,867, 11,503 & 11,612 respectively.
As was the case with Q3, the number of units for which samples were collected for the sectors – Construction, IT/BPO & Financial Services in Q4 is lower than those surveyed in Q2. This also implies a lesser coverage in the survey in these sectors compared to the allocated sample units for the respective sectors.
Estimated total employment increased by 3.5 lakhs in Q4, with IT/BPO sector being the main contributor
As per the survey, the total estimated work force in Q4 was 3.18 crores across 5.31 lakh establishments.  This is 3.5 lakhs more than the Q3 figure, where in the estimated work force was 3.145 crores in slightly higher number of establishments. The increase is smaller compared to Q3, where in 4.5 lakh workforce was added compared to Q2.
There is a fall in the number of workers estimated to be working in the Manufacturing sector, which employs the highest number of workers.  In Q4, an estimated 1.22 crores workers were engaged in this sector, while in Q3 it was nearly 1.24 crores i.e., around 1.45 lakh more than the Q4 estimation for those working in manufacturing sector.
Despite the fall in the number of workers in this major sector, the overall increase in the estimated workforce is due to the increase in IT/BPO sector. In Q3, the estimated workforce in this sector was 34.56 lakhs across 4650 establishments. This increased to 38.31 lakhs across 4719 establishments in Q4.  The Health Sector is estimated to have added around 0.94 lakhs to its workforce during Q4. The proportionate change in other sectors is lesser, with a fall in estimated workforce in Education and Construction sectors. The share of employees in Manufacturing out of the total estimated work force fell by 0.9% while it increased by 1% for IT/BPO sector.
An increase in the Proprietary ownership among IT/BPO establishments
The share of different types of ownership of the establishments surveyed remained nearly the same during Q4. The greatest proportion of the ownership is proprietary with 29.97%, followed by Private Ltd. Ownership, which is 21.3%. Another 20.6% of the establishments surveyed were categorised as Government/PSUs.
The proportion of ownerships is varied and differs from sector to sector. Manufacturing units have 42.7% of ownership as Propriety, while 35.2% are Private Ltd. Companies, and 14.75% is in the form of Partnerships.  Other sectors which have a higher proportion of their ownership as Proprietary include Trade, and Accommodation & Restaurants.
In the case of Education establishments, 43% are Government/PSUs while 31.8% are run as Non-Profit Institutions. Health Sector also has a significant share of ownership as Government/ PSUs, and NGOs. However, the highest proportion of ownership is Proprietary with 31.7%.
Construction, Trade, Transport sectors are among those with a major portion of the establishments as Private Ltd. Companies. The highest share though is in the case of IT/BPOs with 79.8% of the ownership as Private Ltd. While the share of ownership across the sectors has largely remained same in Q4 compared to Q3, there is a sizeable increase in the share of Proprietary ownership for IT/BPOs from 11.7% in Q3 to 14.7% in Q4, while there is a fall in the share of Private Ltd. ownership.
In case of Financial Institutions, ownership of majority of them is categorised as Government/ PSUs, with a sizeable share of Private ownership & as Cooperative societies. Uniquely, this sector also has a considerable portion of ownership categorised as “others including SHGs.”
Fall in share of Female workers in IT/BPO & Financial Services sectors
The share of female workers in the estimated workforce slightly increased from 31.59% in Q3 to 31.77% in Q4. The share of female workers varies across the sectors. It is the least in Transport Sector, with Females being around 12.46% of the estimated workforce.  Manufacturing sector, which has the highest share of estimated employees has female workforce at 22.08%.
Construction, Accommodation & Restaurants and Trade are the other sectors, where-in the share of female employees is less than a quarter of the total. Each of the sectors except for Health Sector has more male employees. In Health Sector, Females make up 51.99% of the total. Education, Financial Services & IT/BPO sectors also have a better share of female employees.
While the share of females has improved in most of the sectors in Q4, there is fall in IT/BPO and Financial services sectors compared to Q3. In Q3, females made-up 38.7% of the workforce, but in Q4 they constitute 35.8% in the IT/BPO sector. Similarly, in case of financial services sector, it fell from 42.23% to 41.02%.
The share of self-employed females fell to 0.63% in Q4, compared to 0.76% in the previous quarter. There has been an overall fall in those who are self-employed from 2.1% to 1.96%.
One of the significant figures in Q3 was that self-employed females in Financial Services with 8.44% which fell to 5.67% in Q4.
Increase in the share of Regular Employees in Q4
Q3 marked an increase in the share of Contractual and Fixed term employees in total estimated workforce. However, in Q4, there is an increase in the share of regular employees. They constituted 85.33% of the estimated workforce in Q3, which increased to 86.42% in Q4.
The increase in Regular employment is seen in most of the sectors, with IT/BPO being the most prominent. During Q3, regular employees constituted 86.3% of the estimated workforce in this sector. This increased to 94.69% in Q4. There was a fall in the share of contractual employees, but a steeper fall was for those employees on a fixed term. Their share fell from 7.85% to 0.02%.
Nearly 10% of the vacancies in Manufacturing sector are due to non-availability of required skilled workers
The number of available reported vacancies fell in Q4 compared to previous quarter. As per the latest QES, around 1.51 lakh vacancies were reported compared to 1.85 lakhs in Q3.  Out of these vacancies, 80.1% of them are in the process of being filled up, 15% of positions are vacant since there need is now not felt and another 3.95 % of vacancies are not filled due to non-availability of those with required skills.
Vacancy due to this reason is especially high for Manufacturing sector, where-in 9.83% of the vacancies are not filled up due to non-availability of requisite skilled workers. In case of trade sector, it is 6%, Accommodation/Restaurants around 4% and Education 3.43%.  Vacancies because the need is not felt now is especially high in Q4 compared to previous quarters. It increased to 15% in Q4 from 6.28% in Q3.
Featured Image: Quarterly Employment Survey