Start
August 6, 2021 - 3:45 pm
End
August 6, 2021 - 5:15 pm
Title: ‘Do education and vocational trainings lead the Indian workforces to choose self-employment over the salaried employment? Evidence from the non-farm sector’
Hrushikesh Mallick
Associate Professor, Centre for Development Studies, Prasanth Nagar, Ulloor, Thiruvananthapuram-695011, Kerala, India, Email: hrushi@cds.ac.in
Pradeep Kumar Choudhury
Assistant Professor, Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi – 110067, India, Email: pradeepchoudhury@jnu.ac.in
&
Amit Kumar
Ph.D. Scholar, Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, Email: amit.jnu2017@gmail.com
Abstract
While the bulk of research on education and labour market focuses on employment and employability of graduates, this paper has zoomed in on employment choices of Indian adults by examining the role of education and vocational training in self-employment over the salaried employment in the non-farm sector. Analysing the latest periodic labour force survey data, our finding reveals that the vocational training is helping the labour forces to choose self-employment over the salaried occupations in the non-farm sector – with stark differences across socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of individual workforces. It indicates that female workforces, educated workers and employees from backward castes are less likely to be self-employed than their counterparts. Thus, the study empirically underscores a greater need for formal vocational training programs targeted for potential workforces to encourage them towards self-employment, which has important implications for current and future education and labour market policies in India.
Keywords: Education, vocational training, self-employment, salaried employment, non-farm sector