QES for Q3 reveals that there are more self-employed females than males in Financial Services sector
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
May 5, 2022
The third edition of the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) for the period October to December 2021 was released recently by the government. While the total employment increased by 4.5 lakhs compared to the previous quarter, data indicated a fall in the share of regular employees. Financial services is the only sector in which there are more self-employed females than males.
The Ministry of Labour & Employment recently released the report of the third edition of Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) for the period October to December 2021. This report is part of the ‘All-India Quarterly Establishment-based Employment Survey (AQEES)’ conducted by the Labour Bureau. The current report is the third in the series.
About the AQEES
The first publication covering the first quarter of 2021-22, was published in September 2021 and the second publication covering the second quarter was published in January 2022. The aim of AQEES is to provide quarterly updates about employment vacancies, training, and other related parameters for selected nine (9) sectors of the non-farm economy over successive quarters. The nine (9) sectors which account for a substantial share of the total employment in the non-farm establishments in the country are- Manufacturing, Construction, Trade, Transport, Education, Health, Accommodation & Restaurants, Information Technology (IT) & Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), and Financial Services.
The selected nine sectors account for around 85% of the total employment in units with 10 or more workers as per the 6 Economic Census. For this survey, around 12,000 units were targeted to be covered from those establishments employing 10 or more workers in the organised sector from these 9 sectors. These were selected from the Directory of Establishments in the Sixth Economic Census. Units established after 2013-2014 are not included in the survey.
A schedule that contains details pertaining to identification, establishment particulars, employment with the breakup of characteristics such as gender, type, and nature along with vacancy details, skill development program conducted, on-the-job training provided by establishments and others has been used for the survey. Detailed information on the methodology and limitations of the survey was published by Factly earlier.
75% of the units covered are from 4 sectors- Manufacturing, Trade, Education, & Accommodation
For QES-3, a total of 11,612 establishments were visited of which 778 units were found either closed or non-existing on the date of the survey. Information was collected only from 10,834 units belonging to one of these nine sectors, including 49 establishments from outside the coverage of the survey.
A total of 10,867 units were covered in the first round and 11,503 units were covered in the second round. The sector-wise number of units covered in each quarter is provided in the following table. Among the various sectors covered, the highest number of sample establishments were from the manufacturing sector, followed by Trade, Education, and Accommodation & Restaurants. These four sectors alone accounted for 75% of the units visited for the survey.
The estimated total employment has increased by 4.5 lakhs in Q3 compared to Q2
The estimated total employment in the nine selected sectors was 3.145 crores in the third quarter of 2021-22. This is about 4.5 lakhs more than in the second quarter with 3.1 crores estimated employment and about 6.5 lakh more than in the first quarter which was 3.08 crores. According to the Sixth Economic Census (2013-14), the total employment for these 9 sectors was reported as 2.37 crores.
The minister of Labour and Employment tweeted that ‘the report on 3rd Round (Oct–Dec, 2021) of Quarterly Employment Survey shows a rising trend in employment in organised sector, employing 10 or more workers, of the selected 9 sectors.’ This report comes at a time when the issue of unemployment is being discussed widely in the country.
The share of non-profit institutions in the health and education sectors has increased
Based on ownership, almost 30% of the establishments were proprietary establishments and 21.5% were private limited companies. Compared to the previous quarters, the share of private limited companies has dropped from 24.8%. Government/PSUs account for 20.5% and non-profit institutions account for about 11.7%. The share of partnerships is below 10% while that of cooperatives, and others including SHGs is below 5% each.
Further, about 83.5% of the establishments in the IT/BPO sector were private limited companies. The share of proprietary establishments in this sector has dropped from more than 13% in the first quarter to 11.7% in the third quarter. On the other hand, the share of partnership establishments in the sector has gone up from 1.8% to 3.4% in the same period.
The share of private limited companies in the construction sector has come down from 56.3% in Q1 to 47.4% in Q3 while the share of non-profit institutions in the education sector has gone up from 23.8% to 31.5% during the same period. In the health sector, the share of non-profit institutions has increased from 12.1% to 15.6%. There were no such establishments in Construction and Transport sectors.  61.4% of the establishments in Accommodation & Restaurants, 50.7% in Trade, and 43% in Manufacturing had Proprietary ownership.
The manufacturing sector continues to account for the largest share of employment
The manufacturing sector continues to account for the largest share of estimated employment in the select 9 sectors with 39.4%. This is followed by education with 22% and 11% in the IT/BPO sector. The share of employment in the IT/BPO sector has increased from 6.7% in Q1 to 11% in Q3 while that in the Construction sector has dropped from 2.4% to 2% and in trade from 6.6% to 5.3% during the same period.
Share of women has dropped marginally
Contrary to the trend recorded in the previous quarter, the percentage of women employed in the organized sector has dropped from 32.1% in Q2 to 31.6% in Q3. This is in line with the share of female workers recorded in the Sixth Economic Census (31%). In the first quarter, their share was lower than that recorded in the 2013-14 survey.
Share of self-employed females is more than that of males in financial sector
The share of self-employed workers has increased from 1.6% in the first quarter to 1.9% in the second quarter and further to 2.1% in the third quarter. The remaining 97.9% were employees. Self-employment was the highest in financial services with 9.25%. Financial Services is the only sector where there were more self-employed females than males. There were only 0.1% of self-employed females in the IT/BPO sector. Among the employees, the share of females was higher than that of their male counterparts in the health sector with 51%. The share of female employees was also more than 30% in the sectors of Education (43.8%), IT/BPO (38.7%), and Financial Services (33.8%).
Contractual and fixed-term employment has increased while regular employment has dropped
Based on the terms of employment, employees have been categorized into 4- regular employees, contractual employees, fixed-term employees, and casual employees. The share of regular employees has come down from 87.5% in Q1 to 85.3% in Q3. Meanwhile, the share of contractual employees has increased from 7.8% to 8.9% during the same period. The share of fixed-term employees has increased from 0.6% in Q2 to 1.55% in Q3.
Each of the sectors except Construction had more than 80% regular employees. The share of regular employees is more than 90% in the transport and education sector. In Q1 and Q2, the share of regular employees was the highest in the IT/BPO sector with about 98%.  However, in Q3, this has dropped to 86.3%. Instead, the share of contractual and fixed-term employees has increased in the sector from less than 1% in Q1 to 5.7% in Q2 and to 7.9% in Q3. The share of contractual employees has increased across all sectors except in transport and education. The share of contractual employment in health has increased from 2.9% to 9.4% between Q1 and Q3. During the same period, the share of casual employees dropped from 12.5% to 6.16% in the construction sector.
1.85 lakh vacancies have been reported of which 90% are in the manufacturing, health, and education sectors
Across 7 sectors, excluding health and education, there were 68.8 lakh workers who were at least graduates, 67.5 lakh who matriculated but undergraduate level and 70.9 lakh who were Matric/ Secondary or below. Among the graduates, more than 25 lakhs were in the manufacturing sector and about 26.5 lakhs in the IT/BPO sector. The education level for 5.1 lakh workers could not be ascertained. In the health and education sectors, more than 10 lakh persons were at least graduates among non-clinical and non-teaching staff. Overall, 23.5% of the units provided on-the-job training to workers. The number was 34.9% in the health sector units.
Over 1.85 lakh vacancies were reported by the 9 sectors with the manufacturing, health, and education sector accounting for more than 90% of these vacancies. Resignation was the reason behind 44% of the vacancies while retirement was the reason for over 12%. ‘Others’ has been cited as the reason behind the 43% of the vacancies making it difficult to ascertain the exact reason. While 86.5% of the vacancies were in the process of being filled up, about 4% of the vacancies remained because workers with requisite skills were unavailable.
Featured Image: Quarterly Employment Survey