Saturday, September 24, 2011

Pakistan Tops South Asia Jobs Growth 2000-2010

Pakistan's employment growth has been the highest in South Asia region since 2000, followed by Nepal, Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka in that order, according to a recent World Bank report titled "More and Better Jobs in South Asia".



Total employment in South Asia (excluding Afghanistan and Bhutan) rose from 473 million in 2000 to 568 million in 2010, creating an average of just under 800,000 new jobs a month. In all countries except Maldives and Sri Lanka, the largest share of the employed are the low‐end self-employed.



The report says that nearly a third of workers in India and a fifth of workers in Bangladesh and Pakistan are casual laborers. Regular wage and salaried workers represent a fifth or less of total employment.

Analysis of the labor productivity data indicates that growth in TFP (total factor productivity) made a larger relative contribution to the growth of aggregate labor productivity in South Asia during 1980–2008 than did physical and human capital accumulation. In fact, the contribution of TFP growth was higher than in the high‐performing East Asian economies excluding China.



India's labor productivity growth since 1980 has been the highest in South Asia, followed by Sri Lanka and Pakistan. This was particularly the case in India where TFP rose by 2.6% versus 1.4% in Pakistan during this period.

The report argues that South Asia region needs to create a million jobs a month just to keep up with the growth of the workforce. In addition to corruption, conflicts and political instability, the report specifically mentions electricity shortage as a key factor inhibiting job growth in the region. Power sector financial losses across the region are large, resulting from the misalignment of tariffs, the high cost of power procurement, and high transmission and distribution losses. In India the combined cash loss of state-owned distribution companies is more than $20 billion a year, compared with $300 billion of investment needs in 2010–15. The sector deficit in Pakistan is estimated at about $2 billion a year, compared with $32 billion of investment needs in 2010–20.

Increased load shedding in Pakistan alone has cost 400,000 jobs in recent years, according to the World Bank. Although the World Bank report does not address it directly, the anecdotal evidence suggests that almost all of Pakistan's job growth for the decade occurred from 2000-2007 when the economy showed robust gdp growth. During 2000-2007, Pakistan's economy became one of the four fastest growing economies in Asia with its growth rate averaging 7.0 per cent per year for most of this period. As a result of strong economic growth, Pakistan succeeded in reducing poverty by one-half, creating almost 13 million jobs, halving the country's debt burden, raising foreign exchange reserves to a comfortable position and propping the country's exchange rate, restoring investors' confidence and most importantly, taking Pakistan out of the IMF Program. Contrary to its public criticism of the Musharraf-era economy, the preceding facts were acknowledged by the current government in a Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies (MEFP) for 2008/09-2009/10, while signing agreement with the IMF on November 20, 2008.

It's important for Pakistani government to seriously address the energy and security crises to restore investor confidence and bring back the strong economic growth necessary for creating millions of jobs for its growing youth population entering the workforce. The consequences of inaction on this front would be far more disastrous than the negative effects of the current Taliban insurgency.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

More and Better Jobs in South Asia

Incompetence Worse Than Corruption in Pakistan

Pakistan's Circular Debt and Load Shedding

Pakistan Planning Commission

US Fears Aid Will Feed Graft in Pakistan

Pakistan Swallows IMF's Bitter Medicine

Shaukat Aziz's Economic Legacy

Pakistan's Energy Crisis

Karachi Tops Mumbai in Stock Performance

India Pakistan Contrasted 2010

Pakistan's Foreign Visitors Pleasantly Surprised

After Partition: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh

The "Poor" Neighbor by William Dalrymple

Pakistan's Modern Infrastructure

Video: Who Says Pakistan Is a Failed State?

India Worse Than Pakistan, Bangladesh on Nutrition

UNDP Reports Pakistan Poverty Declined to 17 Percent

Pakistan's Choice: Talibanization or Globalization

Pakistan's Financial Services Sector

Pakistan's Decade 1999-2009

South Asia Slipping in Human Development

Asia Gains in Top Asian Universities

BSE-Key Statistics

Pakistan's Multi-Billion Dollar IT Industry

India-Pakistan Military Comparison

Food, Clothing and Shelter in India and Pakistan

Pakistan Energy Crisis

IMF-Pakistan Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies

10 comments:

Riaz Haq said...

Stock and credit markets respond positively to rate cut by Pak central bank, according to The Express Tribune:

KARACHI: The bond and equity markets have reacted strongly to central bank’s surprise decision of slashing the interest rate to bring it on a par with pre-2008 crisis levels.

Karachi inter-bank offered rate (Kibor), the benchmark six-month lending rate, plummeted 95 basis points in a single day to a 26-month low of 11.96%, according to a Topline Securities research note.

Furthermore, yields of the actively traded one-year treasury bills and the benchmark 10-year Pakistan Investment Bonds fell by 75 basis points and 60 basis points to trade around 11.90-93% and 12.00-05%, respectively.

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Saturday cut its benchmark discount rate from 13.5% to 12%.

The rate cut has also benefitted well the stock market on account of better earnings for leveraged companies and reduction in risk-free rate, adds the note.

The Karachi Stock Exchange’s benchmark 100-share index opened with a gap of approximately 350 points to skip over 12,000 points for the first time in two months on Monday.

Profits of leveraged companies to jump 2-8%

Heavily leveraged companies from the cement, textile and fertiliser sectors – whose loans are floating and linked with Kibor – will have to bear lower interest charges from January 2012 following quarterly loan re-pricing in December, says the note.

These companies will be the major beneficiaries of the cut in discount rate, the fee commercial banks pay to borrow money from the SBP. DG Khan Cement, Engro and Pakistan State Oil will be some of the major gainers as their annualised earnings will increase by 7.8%, 6.5% and 2.1%, respectively, adds the research note.

Overall, the rate cut will augment earnings growth by 0.5% in 2012.


http://tribune.com.pk/story/271244/chain-reaction-surprise-rate-cut-takes-kibor-to-26-month-low/

Unknown said...

mr riaz.. i am an indian and wish poverty gets eleminated from south asia as soon as possible so that south asia becomes most stable and wealthy region of the world.. may god bless us all

Hopewins said...

^^RH: "The report argues that South Asia region needs to create a million jobs a month just to keep up with the growth of the workforce."
---

This is silly. 12 million jobs a year is too low given South-Asian demographics.

Indian Government is reporting jobs needed as 20 million a year for next ten years.

GOP is reporting jobs needed at 2.5 million a year for next ten years.

Bangladesh is is reporting jobs needed as 2.5 million a year for next ten years.

So I would say that "South Asia" needs at least 25-26 million jobs per year over next 10 years in order to prevent the formation of a "lost generation of youths".

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an Express Tribune report on youth business loans in Pakistan:

With his new financing scheme for the youth, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Saturday unveiled a plan to enable budding entrepreneurs to run their business ventures.
The Youth Business Loans initiative is the government’s delivery of a promise made during the election campaign. “During the election campaign, I witnessed the vigour and enthusiasm that the youth showed, and promised that if voted to power, the PML-N would empower the youth of Pakistan so they can contribute effectively towards the development of the country,” he said at the launch of the scheme.
The chairperson of the prime minister’s Youth Business Loans scheme, Maryam Nawaz, said the aim was to convert young ‘dependents’ into ‘providers’.
-------------
The scheme is designed to provide subsidised financing at eight percent mark-up per annum for 100,000 beneficiaries through National Bank of Pakistan and First Women Bank.
The total mark up rate would be 15 per cent but the government would pay the remaining seven percent on behalf of the applicants.
Those falling in the age group of 21 and 45 years are eligible to apply for loans from Rs100,000 to Rs2,000,000.
Small business loans with a tenure of up to seven years plus one-year grace period and a debt-equity ratio of 90:10 will be disbursed across the country including Gilgit-Baltistan‚ Azad Jammu and Kashmir and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
Youth will have an eight-year payback period with the first year as a grace period for repayment.


http://tribune.com.pk/story/642764/pm-business-loans-scheme-govt-launches-initiative-to-empower-youth/

Riaz Haq said...

From VOA report:

The World Bank says that in Pakistan, roughly 70 percent work in the so-called informal sector, a part of the economy that is unregulated and untaxed.

On a good day, Jamil Hassan will have some 15 customers, and earn an average of $8 a day.

Hassan is one of the millions working in Pakistan's informal economy, the mainstay for the country's vast poor. He never went to school. Cutting hair is all he knows.

"I've been doing this all my life," he said. "My father and grandfather did it before me, so this is what I do."

About 40 percent of all workers in Pakistan have no education. Hassan says illiterate people like him will never make enough to be able to save money.

Economist Ali Kamal says the informal economy can be seen as helping the country's overall economy.

"It absorbs a labor who is otherwise unemployed, it provides services at a cheaper cost and cheaper price to the general public, and it complements the formal sector," he said.

Mohammad Naeem works in a modest seasonal wheat mill, when Pakistan's constant power cuts don't grind work to a halt. Naeem says he would like to have his own business. But he doesn't believe in bank loans or in savings.

"I feel that people should not take loans, not owe money," he said. "That is very important. You should only use what you earn."

Kamal says millions of workers like Naeem and Hassan don't pay taxes, meaning less money for an already cash-strapped state.

"If we collect sales tax from all those informal sectors, it may account for four to five percent of GDP, and if we collect four to five percent GDP in sales tax from those informal activities, then we don't have any budget deficit anymore," he said.

But as of now, the informal sector is providing cheaper goods, services and labor to the formal sector. Analysts say Pakistan would have to reform its entire economic structure to change the situation


http://m.voanews.com/a/millions-labor-in-pakistans-informal-economy/1894009.html

Riaz Haq said...

They’re (jobs) being obliterated by technology.

Check out your groceries or drugstore purchases using a kiosk? A worker behind a cash register used to do that.

Buy clothes without visiting a store? You’ve taken work from a salesman.

Book your vacation using an online program? You’ve helped lay off a travel agent — perhaps one at American Express Co., which announced this month that it plans to cut 5,400 jobs, mainly in its travel business, as more of its customers shift to online portals to plan trips.

Software is picking out worrisome blots in medical scans, running trains without conductors, analyzing Twitter traffic to tell where to sell certain snacks, sifting through documents for evidence in court cases, recording power usage beamed from digital utility meters at millions of homes, and sorting returned library books.

Year after year, the software that runs computers and an array of other devices becomes more capable of doing tasks that humans have always done. For decades, science fiction warned of a future when we would be architects of our own obsolescence, replaced by our machines; an Associated Press analysis finds that the future has arrived.

‘’I have never seen a period where computers demonstrated as many skills and abilities as they have over the past seven years,” says Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-author of “Race Against the Machine.”

The global economy is being reshaped by machines that generate and analyze vast amounts of data; by devices such as smartphones and tablet computers that let people work just about anywhere, even when they’re on the move; by smarter, nimbler robots; and by services that let businesses rent computing power when they need it, instead of installing expensive equipment and hiring IT staffs to run it. Whole employment categories, from secretaries to travel agents, are disappearing.

“There’s no sector of the economy that’s going to get a pass,” says Martin Ford, who runs a software company and wrote “The Lights in the Tunnel,” a book predicting widespread job losses. “It’s everywhere.”

The numbers startle even labor economists. In the United States, half of the 7.5 million jobs lost during the Great Recession paid middle-class wages, ranging from $38,000 to $68,000. But only 2 percent of the 3.5 million jobs gained since the recession ended in June 2009 are midpay. Nearly 70 percent are low-paying jobs; 29 percent pay well.

In the 17 European countries that use the euro as their currency, the numbers are even worse. Almost 4.3 million low-pay jobs have been gained since mid-2009, but the loss of midpay jobs has never stopped. A total of 7.6 million disappeared from January 2008 through last June.

Some occupations are beneficiaries of the march of technology, such as software engineers and app designers. But, overall, technology is eliminating far more jobs than it is creating.

To better understand the impact of technology on jobs, The Associated Press analyzed employment data from 20 countries; and interviewed economists, technology experts, robot manufacturers, software developers, CEOs, and workers who are competing with smarter machines.

The AP’s key findings:

■ Over the past 50 years, technology has drastically reduced the number of jobs in manufacturing. Robots and other machines controlled by computer programs work faster and make fewer mistakes than humans. Now, that same efficiency is being unleashed in the service economy.

■ Technology is being adopted by every kind of organization that employs people — in large corporations and small businesses, established companies and startups, schools, hospitals, nonprofits and the military.


http://jacksonville.com/news/national/2013-01-28/story/ap-investigation-technology-killing-millions-middle-class-jobs

Riaz Haq said...

Unfortunately, cross-country analysis of the connections between manufacturing employment and levels of development has been restricted to OECD countries. This matters because many developing country governments have large programs to stimulate manufacturing activity, on the understanding that jobs and higher incomes will follow.


Ambitious job targets are announced - such as 100 million new manufacturing jobs by 2022 in India. These are typically justified with reference to the experiences of earlier industrializers, like Korea and Taiwan. Public budgets, land and labor regulations, and even education policy are being modified to pursue these manufacturing jobs. We can see why developing countries want these manufacturing jobs: our data show that a country’s peak manufacturing employment share between 1970 and 2010 rather than is its peak manufacturing output share, is a much better predictor of its average per capita GDP in 2005-2010. Controlling for peak manufacturing employment shares and the date that manufacturing activity peaked, peak output shares are insignificant predictors of subsequent prosperity. This suggests that manufacturing output matters for prosperity only insofar as it comes with jobs. Moreover, we show that every country that is rich today, by any reasonable standard, had more than an 18-20% manufacturing employment share sometime since 1970.


It is important to note that industrial activity typically grows with income in poorer countries, peaks, and then falls with income and wages in richer (deindustrializing) countries. There are two reasons we think that manufacturing employment-led development is becoming more challenging.

Labor productivity has risen faster in manufacturing than in the wider economy. Higher levels of manufacturing output are now compatible with lower levels of manufacturing employment.

Manufacturing activity is now more apt to leave for other countries as labor costs rise. Therefore deindustrialization kicks in at lower income levels. Moreover, this premature deindustrialization is more apparent in employment than in output data. Output can be sustained in the face of rising labor costs by replacing workers with machinery. (Arvind Subramaniam and Amrit Amirapu show similar trends in industrial (manufacturing plus mining, utilities and construction) employment using repeated cross-sections of countries.)
Countries still industrialize and then deindustrialize as they become richer. However, industrial employment shares for today’s late industrializers such as China, India and Bangladesh are all below 16%, and on today’s trends seem unlikely to rise much further. Moreover, the per capita income levels at which deindustrialization kicks in have fallen from $34,000 in 1970 to around $9,000 in 2010.

These results urge a balanced approach to industrialization. They confirm that industrialization matters – when it brings jobs; but they also confirm that this is less and less likely to happen. Governments must not neglect manufacturing. Nor can they rely as heavily on it as they once did.


http://blogs.worldbank.org/jobs/manufacturing-conundrum

Riaz Haq said...

Raghuram Rajan flags India's biggest worry that could cost Modi a win in 2019 elections: Slow Job Growth

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/raghuram-rajan-flags-indias-biggest-worry-that-could-cost-modi-a-win-in-2019-elections/articleshow/60434472.cms

"Remember that we have what we call the population dividend. A million new people entering the labor force every month," Rajan said. "If we don’t provide these jobs that are required, you have a million dissatisfied entrants. And that could create a lot of social mischief."

Rajan is right in this aspect. India will have the world’s biggest labor force by 2027 and the millennial generation is crucial to anchor one of the fastest paces of economic growth. However, fresh employment opp ..

Under Modi, just over 10,000 jobs a month are being created instead, according to government figures from 2015.

Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/60434472.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Riaz Haq said...

BBC News - #India jobs: The signs point to a bleak outlook for #employment. #Modi #BJP #economy

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-41495792#

Dr Abraham believes that existing jobs may have been drying up in India for a while now. Jobs in farming where nearly half of Indians are engaged for their livelihood - too many people cultivating too little land - are disappearing. Successive droughts and unremunerative prices have pushed people out of farms to seek jobs in construction and rural manufacturing. A McKinsey Global Institute study says farm jobs had reduced by 26 million between 2011 and 2015.
But a slowdown in growth - GDP growth has been falling for six consecutive quarters and hit a three year-low of 5.7% during April-June - triggered in part by a controversial cash ban last year and July's imposition of a sweeping but clunky Goods and Services tax that has adversely affected labour-absorbing sectors like farming, construction and private businesses, hitting jobs further.

Hiring in more than 120 companies - metal, capital goods, retail, power, construction and consumer goods - has fallen, according to an analysis by The Indian Express. This, a top HR executive told the newspaper, "reflects upon the lack of expansion plans and near-term growth expectation of these companies".
India's Economic Survey says creating jobs is India's "central challenge". More than 12 million Indians will be entering the labour market and looking for jobs every year until 2030. Some 26 million Indians - roughly a population equal to Australia's - already are looking for regular work.
'Scratching a living'
India has a curious jobs problem. Unlike in the West, there are no dole queues, for example, which are a marker of unemployment. Economist Vijay Joshi says poverty and lack of a social security system "ensure that most people have to scratch a living somehow, simply in order to survive".
Also there are many "openly unemployed people" who are supported by their families. Then there's a vast amount of underemployment - too many people sharing work that could be done by fewer hands. Many work for long hours with poor returns.
Also, most people - more than 80% of the labour force - work in the sprawling, unorganised or informal industries with poor working conditions, paltry wages and scanty benefits. Very few of these jobs lead to security of income, location or employment. Only 7% of Indians actually work in the formal economy with full benefits, according to estimates.

Riaz Haq said...

The Inter­na­tional Labour Organisa­tion (ILO) has warned that Asia-Pacific still faces structural weaknesses in its labour markets despite two decades of economic growth.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1446301


https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangkok/---sro-bangkok/documents/publication/wcms_649885.pdf

In its ‘Asia-Pacific Employ­ment’ and ‘Social Outlook 2018’, released on Friday, ILO pointed out that although the regional unemployment rate is projected to remain 4.1 per cent through 2020, the vulnerable employment rate is expect to creep up towards 49pc, reversing a downward trend of at least two decades.

The region’s future prospects will require that economic growth go hand in hand with a further expansion of decent work, it says.

While real wage growth surpassed labour productivity growth between 2010 and 2016 in almost all countries, the increase in wages of employees looked especially strong in China, Thailand and Vietnam. However, negative wage growth was witnessed in Pakis­tan in 2015-16 at minus 4.7pc.

In Pakistan’s education sector, 6.6pc of the total female employment in 2016 was well behind the 72.9pc share in agriculture and 12.7pc in manufacturing.

Pakistan stands out with 15.3pc of women working from their homes, and 37pc working on the land (in agriculture) in 2017.

Structural transformation has been strongly felt in the region, with employment moving from agriculture mainly into services and only to some extent into industry. Most of the loss in agriculture was taken up by the increase in employment in the services sector, where 740 million jobs have been gained since 2000.

Manufacturing jobs dec­rea­sed slightly from the peak in the mid-2000s, with more job losses accruing to women than men.

The report says while the Asia-Pacific region has made rapid progress to substantially reduce extreme poverty, one fourth of all workers in the region — 446m workers — still lived in moderate or extreme poverty in 2017 and nearly half of the workforce — 930m people — were still making a living in vulnerable employment as own-account or unpaid contributing family workers.

With 1.9bn workers — 1.2bn men and 700m women, the Asia-Pacific region represented 60pc of the global workforce in 2017.

Asia and the Pacific has the most people working, relative to the working-age population. Employment-to-population ratio stands at 59.7pc, compared with 58.6pc at the global level.

Large numbers of workers in the region, especially those in low-paid jobs, work more than 48 hours per week.

The average hours worked in Southern Asia and Eastern Asia in 2017 were the world’s highest, at 46.4 and 46.3 hours per week, respectively.

In Eastern Asia, almost one in five workers worked in excess of 60 hours per week. The regional unemployment rate at 4.1pc is the world’s lowest and well below the global rate of 5.5pc in 2017. But while the global unemployment rate has held steady since 2015, the rate in the Asia-Pacific region has increased slightly by 0.1 percentage point.

In total there were 80.9m unemployed persons in Asia and the Pacific in 2018.

At 10.4pc, unemployment rate among youth remained unchanged from 2015, while the global rate increased to 12.6pc. Thirty five per cent of the region’s unemployed were youth (aged 15—24), although youth made up only 20pc of the working-age population.

In general terms, the labour market gains evident in the Asia-Pacific region in the past few years remain present but fragile.

Decent work deficits persist in all countries in the region and continue to weigh heavily on development trajectories.

Over the coming years, economic growth is expected to remain strong in the region, with growth rates of 5.6pc expected for 2018 and 2019, compared with 3.9pc at the global level.