Employment Numbers on the Rise in Tamil Nadu With Industrial Sector on Top, Shows CMIE Survey

Total employment in Tamil Nadu between January-April 2022 and January-April 2023 increased considerably compared to the same period last year, says a survey by Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).

Close to 2.5 million people gained employment in the state during that period in the past year. Much of this increase comes from the addition of jobs in industry, followed by the agricultural sector. The services sector, however, witnessed a fall in employment during this period.

Total employment in Tamil Nadu has seen an upward trend recently, although it has not recovered to pre-Covid levels yet. In 2019, employment in the state ranged between 27-29 million, according to CMIE’s Consumer Pyramids Household Survey data. With the imposition of the lockdown, employment in Tamil Nadu slumped to 21.8 million in May-August 2020, and remained below 24 million that year.

“Post January-April 2022, however, employment in the state has been on the rise. It climbed to 26 million in January-April 2023, which is the highest employment recorded since the beginning of 2020,” says the survey report.

Tamil Nadu being the second largest industrial state in the country, the largest provider of employment here is the industrial sector. A little over 37% of the total workforce in the state was employed in industry in January-April 2022. Out of the 23.5 million people in Tamil Nadu’s workforce, 8.7 million people were in industry during this period.

The second highest share of employment was in the services sector at 35.3%. Around 8.3 million people in Tamil Nadu were employed in services in January-April 2022. The agricultural sector employed close to 6.5 million people, 27.6% of the total workforce of Tamil Nadu.

“Between January-April 2022 and January-April 2023, total employment in Tamil Nadu increased by 2.46 million. A large share of this rise comes from a jump in employment in the industrial sector which added 2.1 million jobs. The agricultural sector provided employment to 1.2 million additional people. In the services sector, on the other hand, employment fell by around 0.83 million,” says the report.

Within industry, the largest increase in employment between January-April 2022 and January-April 2023 was witnessed in the manufacturing sector. In this period, around 1.65 million people were able to secure jobs in manufacturing, resulting in a total of 6.2 million employed persons in this sector.

The share of manufacturing in employment increased from 51.6% to 56.7% in the same period. The next biggest employer within the industrial sector in Tamil Nadu, comprising around 42% of the employment, was real estate & construction. In January-April 2023, the number of jobs in real estate & construction climbed to 4.6 million, compared to 4.2 million in January-April 2022.

In the agricultural sector, employment increased from 6.5 million in January-April 2022 to 7.7 million in January-April 2023.

Employment in the services sector in Tamil Nadu stood at 8.3 million in January-April 2022. The number of jobs in this sector fell by 0.8 million, to 7.5 million in January-April 2023. In this period, the share of services in total employment in Tamil Nadu fell from 35.3% to 28.8%, which is a significant decline of 6.5 percentage points.

Within the services sector, the largest employers are wholesale & retail trading and hotel & tourism. Both these sectors recorded large decreases in employment in January-April 2023 compared to a year ago. In wholesale & retail trading, the number of jobs fell from 3.7 million to a little under 3 million. Jobs in the hotel & tourism sector declined from 2.1 million to 1.5 million in this period. Employment in these two sectors alone fell by a massive 1.4 million.