10 crore jobs coming! CII says government reforms creating new livelihoods, 8 sectors to create opportunities

The recent reforms ushered in by the government are creating new livelihoods across existing and emerging sectors, with eight segments of the economy alone expected to create over 10 crore jobs by 2025, CII said Thursday. "With skill levels rising and substantial growth in startups and new businesses, the quality of jobs is being also enhanced, including through higher incomes," CII President Rakesh Bharti Mittal told PTI. According to Mittal, the measures to promote ease of doing business, cut in tax rates for smaller enterprises to 25 per cent, and reduction in interest rates are creating the right atmosphere for new businesses to flourish, particularly SMEs.

"This is an effective stimulant for job creation," he said. The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) expects eight sectors -- retail, construction, transport and logistics, tourism and hospitality, handlooms and handicrafts, textiles and apparels, food processing, and automotive -- to generate over 10 crore jobs by 2025.

Mittal observed that as per the latest data relating to Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), around 7.2 million new subscribers were added to social security schemes between September 2017 and December 2018. He said the social security scheme numbers of EPFO reflect the rising offtake of new jobs in the formal sector and this is in line with the estimates for increase in employment in CII's feedback from large companies.

The statement assumes significance as the opposition parties have been slamming the government over lack of job creation. India's unemployment rate hit a 45-year high of 6.1 per cent in 2017, a media report had said earlier based on an official survey, which the government has said was yet to be approved.

The CII estimates construction sector to add about 2.87 crore employment opportunities between 2015 and 2025, followed by retail and transport and logistics. Discussions at a recent CII workshop on jobs brought out that the number of startups can go up to 1,50,000 over the next two years from 60,000 currently.

These new enterprises along with established tech-related enterprises and 63 million current MSMEs have the potential to enhance direct and indirect job opportunities by about 36 million over the next four years, according to CII.