Women Employment Levels Fall Sharply In A Decade: Report

Employment levels for women in 2015-16 have registered a sharp dip as against 2005-06 however women have been more employed than men in occupations such as ‘professional’, ‘technical’, ‘administrative’ and ‘managerial’, according to the national family health survey.

A slightly higher percentage of women (10 percent) than men (8 percent) are employed in a professional, technical, administrative, or managerial occupations. However interestingly, 11 percent of the women worked as self employed in the past year.

Employment levels have come down to 24 percent in 2015-16 for women, as compared to 36 percent in 2005-06 according to the data collected in the survey. The percentage currently employed has come down from 85 percent to 75 percent in the last ten years. 70 percent of women and 19 percent of men reported that they were not employed in the 12 months preceding the survey.

The survey has found out that men are three times as likely to be currently employed compared to women. The occupations have been categorised as professional, technical, administrative, managerial, clerical, sales and services, skilled manual, unskilled manual and agriculture.

Agriculture stands as the most favourable employer for both women and men with 48 percent women and 32 percent men finding employment as agricultural workers, followed by production workers, employing 21 women and 32 percent men. Cash rules in terms of job wages as nearly 81 percent women and 90 percent men receive their payments in cash, but 15 percent of women and 8 percent of men did not receive any payment at all for their work done.

Nearly, 29.4 percent men in the age group of 15-19 years of age are currently employed, while 4.5 percent are currently unemployed. This number rises up few notches to 63.9 percent when considering employment between the age group of 20-24 years. The percentage of unemployed men goes down further ranging from 8.2 percent to 1.9 percent for men between 25-49 year old men.