There has been much excitement recently at the supposedly significant recent increase in work participation rates in India, which is being heralded as a sign of the success of the current government’s economic policies. How significant is this increase in…
In an economy like ours where the work-force is not neatly divided into “the employed” and “the unemployed”, and instead there is massive and growing casualisation of work, measuring unemployment is a tricky business. It necessarily means asking a person…
The latest Annual Report of the Periodic Labour Force Survey, covering July 2022 to June 2023, has some interesting results. On the face of it, there seems to be some improvement in the labour market, as expressed in the declining…
Well over half of all workers in India are self-employed. The proportions of self-employed workers are significantly higher in rural areas, and among women. In rural areas, it is presumed that it is the dominance of small-scale agriculture that leads…
There is a commonly-held view that while capitalism in its early stages brings about unemployment and hence an accentuation of poverty, this initial damage is subsequently reversed as it keeps growing. The unemployed get largely absorbed into the ranks of…
India is experiencing a job market crisis. Applicants for preferred jobs outnumber vacancies by numbers that make the process a lottery. The qualifications of these applicants far exceed the skills or knowledge required by many jobs. Attempts to influence or…
As the earth warms up to increasingly unlivable temperatures, it is clear that fossil fuel energy sources will have to be abandoned as fast as possible, even though most governments today are extraordinarily slow to move decisively on this. Clearly,…
For quite some time, China was seen as a ‘threat’ by virtue of being a global manufacturing hub, embedding knowledge in production and riding on its cheap labour force and large volumes of foreign investment, to win a disproportionate share…
A process started four year’s back by Australian’s competition commission could offer support to a struggling global news business. The process, to curb internet firms from freeriding on news they do not generate, is expected to culminate in legislation that…
The pandemic and the lockdown are certainly causing an absolute shrinkage in the Gross Domestic Product of the Indian economy. But these tend to obscure something very serious that was happening even earlier, namely a real income decline for vast…
