Labour ministry reports on centre's staff, employment stalled since 2012

The census of central government employees, which was done every two to three years since 1960, has not been done since 2011. In a span of just over 50 years between 1960 and 2011, there were 34 such reports.

According to the prefaces to the reports, the census is meant to help in “planning for framing of welfare schemes and other service facilities” for all central government employees.

In response to a question in Lok Sabha in March 2020, on whether the government has discontinued the periodic census of central government employees, the minister of state for labour and employment said that it has not been discontinued. Asked when the next such census would be conducted, the minister stated that the “the decision for bringing out the next report will be taken after obtaining views from the department of personnel and training (DoPT) and the national statistics office in the ministry of statistics and programme implementation”.

The census has been conducted by the directorate general of employment and training in the labour ministry. The 2011 report, which was the 34 th, came out in 2014 but gave the data as on March 31, 2011. The directorate did not respond to TOI’s queries on why the census has been stalled for 14 years.

The available reports show that the number of central government employees in regular employment kept increasing from 27 lakh in 1971 to an all-time high of 43.5 lakh in 1995, after which it steadily reduced and became less than 31 lakh in 2011. In the same period, the share of women to total employees increased steadily from 2.5% in 1971 to 11% in 2011.

The reports give detailed ministry-wise break-ups of gazetted and non-gazetted employees and city-wise break-ups by different pay grades. However, though the census forms are to be filled up by all central government establishments, thousands of them do not return the filled forms and hence, on average, only about 65% of establishments responded.

Employment Review was yet another report brought out regularly, with 39 reports being brought out over the years. It contained data collected from employment exchanges and focused on the employment situation prevailing in the organised sector. Here again, there have been no reports since 2012.


Source: Census of central government employees reports

The annual “report to the people” on employment brought out by the ministry was meant to generate “a healthy public debate on the issue of creating quality employment with distributive justice”. Only three such reports were brought out in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and there have been none since.