India’s formal sector employment jumped by 0.4 million in the October-December quarter of 2021 with the total number of workers employed across nine sectors at 31.4 million compared to 31 million in July-September quarter and 30.8 million in the April-June quarter of 2021, the labour ministry said on Thursday.

As per the quarterly employment survey (QES) for the third quarter of the last fiscal, manufacturing employed 12.3 million followed by 0.69 million in the education sector, 0.34 million in IT/BPOs and 0.32 million in the health sector.

These nine sectors accounted for about 85% of the total employment in units with 10 or more workers in the 6th Economic Census. During the third quarter, out of 12,038 allocated samples, 11612 units or 5.31 lakh establishments were surveyed.

Comparative data for the preceding fiscal (2020-21) is not available as the QES was suspended for several years and was launched in its present revamped form from April-June 2021.

The present survey covers establishments with 10 or more employees across nine sectors including manufacturing, construction, trade, transport, education, health, accommodation and restaurants, IT/BPO and financial services.

The last comparable date which is used by the ministry as a base includes the Economic Census 2013-14 that had pegged India’s workforce across these sectors at 23.7 million.

As per the QES, of the total employment estimated in the selected nine sectors, 39.4% was in manufacturing followed by 22% in education, 11% in IT/BPOs and 10.4% in health. Employment in trade accounted for 5.3% while it was 4.2% in the transport sectors.

Further, the overall percentage of female workers in the second quarter was higher at 32.1%, compared to 29.3% reported during the first round of QES. Overall around 23.55% of units provided on-the-job training to their workers during this period.

Regular workers constitute 85.3% of the estimated workforce in the nine selected sectors while 8.9% were contract workers. This is a shift towards more contract workers as the proportion of regular workers stood at 87% in the second quarter while that of casual workers was 2%.

As per the report, about 1.85 lakhs vacancies were reported across the nine sectors during the period.

The Labour Bureau, under the ministry of labour and employment, had last done the seventh QES for the July-September quarter of 2017. Work of the eighth QES for October-December 2017 was subsequently put on hold because of a wide divergence in data on employment generation under this survey and the payroll data.

According to the ministry, the quarter-on-quarter survey results will provide a relative change in employment situation over successive quarters in the above segment of the Indian economy.