With employment to 1.1 crore people during three years, agriculture sector comes to rescue during crisis: CMIE

The agriculture sector has provided jobs to 1.1 crore people during the last three years due to its better performance. This performance has come at a time when 1.5 crore people in the other sectors of the economy lost their jobs. This has been stated by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) in its latest report.

According to the Consumer Pyramids Household Survey of the CMIE, 45 lakh additional people got employed in the agriculture sector during 2021-22. Earlier, even when the Covid-19 pandemic had severely affected the economy in 2020-21 and the total employment in the country had declined by 2.17 crore, the agriculture sector had provided employment to 34 lakh people. Similarly, 31 lakh people got employed in the agriculture sector in 2019-20.

CMIE says agriculture has performed well on the employment front due to good monsoons, bumper production and high prices for the yield. According to it, the prices of the agricultural yield have constantly been keeping high. Bumper crops have benefited the farmers. So, labourers from the other sectors of the economy have shifted to agriculture.

During 2019-20, the agriculture sector had registered a growth of 5.5 per cent while the non-agriculture sector that of 3.5 per cent. In the financial year 2020-21, the economy shrank by 6.3 per cent due to the pandemic but the agriculture sector grew by 3.3 per cent. Similarly, when the economy came out of its negative growth in 2021-22, the agriculture sector continued with its impressive performance and again registered a growth of 3.3 per cent.