Giving Compass' Take:

• Pramit Bhattacharya and Sriharsha Devulapalli break down India's employment landscape, highlighting regional and national trends. 

• How can funders use this information to guide employment initiatives in India? What areas need the most support? 

• Learn why giving in India is a great opportunity to scale impact. 

Where do Indians find regular jobs easily? Where are jobs harder to find? Are there parts of the country where regular factory jobs outnumber other kinds of jobs? Such questions are typically hard to answer because of the lack of granular jobs data in the country.

The official employment surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) typically have very small district-wise samples, which makes district-wise estimates much less precise than state-level ones.

The only source that provides rich employment data at the district level and beyond is the census.

While the latest census data pertains to 2011, it provides far more granular and rich information than any other data source on jobs.

Districts with a relatively high share of non-farm jobs are clustered in India’s south.

A Mint analysis of the disaggregated census jobs data released earlier this year shows a striking divergence in the availability of regular non-farm jobs across the country. Districts with a relatively high share of regular jobs were clustered in the extreme south, and in a narrow strip extending along the western coastline across the country till the extreme north, the data shows. Barring a few pockets, in the rest of the country, only a small minority of the workforce was engaged in regular non-farm jobs. What is even more worrying is the change over time. As the accompanying map shows, districts with a high share of regular non-farm jobs have added more such jobs over time, while districts in the rest of the country have either regressed or added very few non-farm jobs between 2001 and 2011, accentuating the divide between the west and the east.

Read the full article about India's employment landscape by Pramit Bhattacharya and Sriharsha Devulapalli at India Development Review.