India creating more jobs than any other Emerging Market (including China)

Rather surprising news but still interesting… India is creating FAR more jobs than any amongst the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China)!

A study conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a club of rich countries, has brought out the pleasant fact that India has been generating more jobs than any other BRIC – Brazil, Russia, India, China – country.

OECD’s Economic Outlook 2007, released on Tuesday, has revealed that India generated 11.3 million net new jobs annually between 2000 and 2005, which is over 60% more than the 7 million new jobs created in China every year.

The performance looks even more impressive when contrasted with another emerging giant, Brazil. The South American biggie clocked 2.7 million new jobs created annually over the five-year period, while Russia saw some 700,000 new jobs added every year.

India, in fact, generated half the jobs in BRIC nations: a performance which must be way better than any of the OECD countries growing at a much slower pace.

At 22 million new jobs every year in BRIC countries – which make for over 45% of the global labour supply and account for a quarter of the world’s GDP – faster economic growth meant that employment gains were more than five times faster that the 3.7 million new jobs created in the 30 developed countries that are members of OECD.

But the smart figures can hardly mask some of the underlying worries: the figures underline once again the continued problem of low employment elasticity – potential to create fewer jobs with every 1% increase in GDP – which has remained constant at 0.3%.

In other words, a stark reminder of the need to grow faster in order to create more jobs. Again, while the four economies have made good gains during the five years, the report pointed out that a large section remained unemployed particularly in rural areas.

It estimated that there were 130 million surplus workers in rural India. Besides, finding jobs for women and youth in India still remained a problem.

There was some more bad news packed in, with the report saying that at 50.5% the employment to population ratio in India was the poorest, compared with at least 66% in the other BRIC countries.

Though India can draw some solace from the fact that the unemployment rate was the lowest at 6% in 2005, issues related to under-employment and the veracity of data spoil the show. Over 94% of the work force in India was employed in the informal sector, which was much higher than the other three BRIC countries.

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