Employment inequality by industry groups in Urban India: Some challenges in measurement

Inequality in employment appears in different industries. As manufacturing industries are heterogenous in using production technology, the type of labour employment in different industry groups may also be different. We define employment inequality on the basis of quality of job. The study defines good quality and bad quality jobs in terms of duration of job contract, whether regular employment and categories of occupation. This study measures and analyses employment inequality in different manufacturing industries at 2-digit level of industrial classification by using periodic labour force survey (PLFS) 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21. Measuring employment inequality is a challenging task because job type is a qualitative variable. In this study, we use parametric method in measuring employment inequality by applying logit link function in panel data framework which converts the binary dependent variable into a numerical scale range between - σto σ. It has been found that inequality in employment exists among workers more in casual employment compared to regular salaried. Significant percentage share of employment in urban area across sectors for male and female highlights the effect of pandemic and nation-wide lockdown which resulted in huge amounts of layoffs and unemployment thus revealing inequality in getting good-quality job, hence, employment inequality.