As per employment estimates for the first quarter of this fiscal, direct employment in the organised sector has gone down by a massive 1.71 lakh, a Labour Bureau survey on the effects of the economic slowdown has found. Figures from the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) buttress this finding: EPF withdrawal requests between April and June 2009 have touched a record 31.51 lakh, indicating largescale layoffs and a severe cash crunch for the working class.

The Textiles industry is the worst hit, having shed 1.54 lakh jobs between April and June 2009. The IT/BPO sector comes next, having reported 34,000 job losses in the same period, the Labour Bureau survey found. The Gems and Jewellery sector reported 20,000 job losses, though some employers also reported worker shortages.

Overall employment across the eight sectors surveyed — including Metals, Leather, Automobiles, Transport and Handloom/Powerloom — fell by 1.31 lakh in the first quarter of this financial year.

Export units remained badly hit. Across all sectors, employment at exporting units fell by a sharp 1.67 lakh between April and June. Non-exporting units in all but three sectors (Textiles, Transport and Handlooms) saw total employment increase by 35,000.

Some sectors did see a recovery of sorts, though they preferred hiring contract workers over full-timers. The Handloom/Powerloom sector created 49,000 new jobs in the quarter, followed by Automobiles (23,000 new jobs) and Leather (7,000). Overall, contract workers’ employment went up by 0.4 lakh, while 1.71 lakh regular jobs were lost.

Though employment numbers are typically released only once a year, in the Annual Survey of Industries, the Labour Bureau had initiated quarterly employment surveys to study the impact of the global slowdown on India. The first survey had revealed five lakh job losses between October and December 2008, the first quarter after the meltdown kicked in.

In the quarter January-March 2009, employment in export-oriented sectors like Gems & Jewellery, Textiles, Apparel and IT/BPO increased by a marginal 20,000, compared to December 2008. In that quarter, Leather, Metals and Transport had reported reductions of 0.4% to 2.8% in their workforce.

“In just the first quarter of 2009-10, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has received 31.51 lakh withdrawal claims — almost equal to the total number of claims received in 2006-07. This means that there may be some recovery, but we need to be constantly vigilant,” a senior government official said.

In 2008-09, EPFO had received a record 98 lakh-plus withdrawal requests, most of them filed after September 2008 when the global meltdown hit home. The EPFO covers 5 per cent of India’s 400 million-strong workforce and has close to 5 crore PF accounts. However, due to the changing nature of the job market in the last two decades, many workers have multiple PF accounts.

The Labour Ministry’s attempts to quantify job losses in the Construction sector through a separate survey have failed. “The manner of employment of construction workers is so complex that there is no employer to be identified on the ground. There is a principal employer, there is a contractor, sub-contractor followed by some other manpower agent. So our researchers went around on construction sites but couldn’t find any authentic information on jobs. But using employment elasticity and the sector’s growth, they have concluded that at least 5 lakh jobs have been lost in construction alone,” a senior Labour Ministry official said.