Ceramic Manufacturing Workforce in India: Trends, Relative Earnings and Its Determinants

Abstract

India’s ceramic industry, characterized by the transitional shift from traditional craft to modern industry, is imbibed to economic growth and development. It has witnessed a dynamic change from all hands-on deck to no hands-on deck. With an aim to understand the change in ceramic manufacturing workforce in India, the paper has analyzed the latest trends of ceramic workforce participation over the time period 1993-94 to 2020-21 using the national sample survey office (NSSO) employment and unemployment (E&U) survey data from 1993-94 to 2011-12 and periodical labour force survey (PLFS) data from 2017-18 to 2020-21. The results showcased that there was a declining trend in the overall workforce participation rate at the end of E&U survey (2011-12), however, after replacing NSSO E&U survey data with PLFS data the overall workforce participation rate showed an increasing trend. However, the study found that there was a continuous decline in the ceramic workforce as the total per cent of overall workforce. Further study highlighted that there is a wide gap between the perday earnings of ceramic and non-ceramic workers. Non-ceramic workers have high per day earning as compared to the ceramic workers that hampers the willingness of the workers to work in this industry. The study has established the impact of various socio-economic variables on per day earnings of the workers using Tobit regression model. The level of education has a positive and significant relation with per day earning of the ceramic workers. Education helps in accelerating the per day earning of the ceramic workers. Furthermore technical education have a highest positive impact on the per day earnings of the ceramic workers.