Maginalised population concentration and employment gap in non-elementary occupations in India: A regional level study
- Journal of Social and Economic Development
- 26(2), Aug, 2024: p.370-395
There is heterogeneity in the Indian labour market, where employment opportunities vary across regions for individuals belonging to different castes and ethnicities. Given this heterogeneity, the study aims to find out whether regional concentration of socially marginalised population classified in terms of castes and ethnicity has any effect on regional variation in employment gap in non-elementary jobs, and looking for the potential factors behind regional variation. The contribution of this study lies in its effort to figure out the applicability of visibility discrimination hypothesis to Indian labour market that talks about a positive association between minority population concentration and inequalities and to find out the factors that could explain regional variation in caste- and ethnicity-based employment gap. Using the data provided by the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2019–2020, the study has estimated caste- and ethnicity-based employment gap in skilled jobs at regional level and found the regional concentration of marginalised groups to have no significant impact on the degree employment gap in skilled jobs. However, gap in years of schooling and industrial composition in terms of employment emerged as significant factors explaining regional variation in employment gap in skilled jobs.- Reproduced