Is industry still the engine of growth? An econometric study of the organized sector employment in India

This paper in an attempt to examine if the manufacturing sector is still the engine of growth delineates the inter-connections among several activities based on time series data on employment in different components of the organized sector in India. The analysis is pursued in the vector auto-regression (VAR) framework taking into account the results of variance decomposition analysis and the impulse response function. The findings suggest that some of the activities are growing independent of the manufacturing sector. Nevertheless manufacturing, construction and community, social and personal services are the most important drivers. Finally, the paper predicts the informal sector employment based on the magnitude of employment in different components of the organized or formal sector. Given the narrow margin of error of forecast the paper argues that in the absence of time series information on total employment, the time series on organized sector employment can be used for necessary predictions and planning required for employment and poverty.