Employment Structure and Urbanisation: Changing Patterns in India

Abstract

This paper is a study to look at changing patterns of urbanisation and employment structure and their
linkages, if any. By and large Indian society has always been a rural one; however, a process of rapid
urbanisation is taking place. Comparing the level of urbanisation in India with the World level, we find
it is nearly half of it. However, annual growth in urban population in India at 3.76 % p.a. is higher than
world-wide annual growth rate of 1.91% p.a. The employment structure of India is leaned towards
service sector, however the findings of paper suggests that service sector has very low employment
elasticity during the analytical period whereas the secondary sector has higher employment elasticity as
compare to the primary and tertiary sectors. Hence, the investment in secondary sector has potential to
address the employment challenges of the country.
Keywords- Urbanisation, Employment, Structural Changes, Elasticity of Employment, Sectoral
Growth.