Informal Manufacturing Sector Job Displacement Due to COVID-19 Pandemic: Myth or Reality?

Abstract

Kerala reported the first COVID-19 case on January 30. In order to stop the disease's spread in a heavily populated nation like India, the government declared a lockdown on 25 March 2020. Unexpected lockout caused wages for workers in the unorganised sector to stagnate, which led to reverse migration in India. During the first round of lockdowns organised by COVID-19, 43.3 million interstate migrants working in the informal manufacturing sector actually went back to their homes. This background encourages us to investigate how the COVID-19 epidemic affected male labour employment, with a primary focus on the unorganised manufacturing sector. The study takes into account the employment situation of male CWS in rural, urban and overall India. To investigate the aforementioned objectives, Poirier's Spline function approach has been used in the study. Relying on secondary data aggregated from ‘The Periodic Labour Force Survey’, Annual Report (2018–2019), (2019–2020), (2020–2021), the research comes to the conclusion that the work scenario for male CWS is more negatively impacted by pandemic in urban than rural areas. The paper ends with appropriate policy recommendations.

Citation

Maity, S., Bakli, P. and Sarangi, S. (2024), "Informal Manufacturing Sector Job Displacement Due to COVID-19 Pandemic: Myth or Reality?", Pal, M.K. and Das, P. (Ed.) Informal Manufacturing and Environmental Sustainability, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 115-128. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83549-998-620241009