3. Changes in the Employment Scenario in Gujarat

Urbanisation in a region is associated with changes in the nature of economic activity in rural areas. The movement of workers from rural to urban areas is reflected in the locational shift of economic activities in addition to the changes in scale of operations. The unorganised activities in the non-agricultural economy are likely to show regional contrasts in performance as these are rooted to the locational resource endowments. Such activities are amorphous in nature and subject to rapid changes that occur due to high mobility or morbidity of smaller units and birth of new units. In Gujarat given the fast pace of urbanisation in the recent years it is possible that several industries are experiencing locational shifts and undergoing changes related to their size. The information available from the Economic Census is used to examine the extent and employment in economic sectors and the temporal changes. The activity wise details of employment from the NSSO do not throw light on size of enterprises, extent of hired workers and other techno-economic characteristics with state and sectoral disaggregation. Such information is available from the EC and the follow up Enterprise Surveys. This chapter traces the overall employment scenario in Gujarat, identifies activities that are dominant repositories of the labour spilling out of the agricultural sector, and the sectoral share in incomes and changes therein. The changes in location of activities across space (rural and urban) and size (OAEs, establishments) are examined. Emerging activities in the non-farm sector in Gujarat fuelling the process of rural transformation are identified based on growth and changes in employment share, and location.