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Technology, Productivity and Employment: An Empirical Analysis of Indian Industries


Affiliations
1 Department of Business Economics, University of Delhi, South Campus, New Delhi – 110021, India
 

Since 2000, technology has changed at a tremendous pace and has transformed the face of industry in the entire world. Many among the top Fortune 500 companies, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Uber, Wal-Mart, are all technology driven and are also mainly in the services sector. While opening many new windows for investment and increase in productivity, the new technology is simultaneously disturbing the existing technological complementarities and exerting a lot of pressure on the supply of the matching skill. Many jobs which exist today would disappear tomorrow and many new jobs will get created tomorrow which do not exist today. So there is a simultaneous creation and destruction of jobs and the net impact thus depends upon their respective pace. Skill mismatches are now a common feature in all economies. While new technology is expected to increase productivity of labour and hence employment especially- in the long run, it is also simultaneously expected to displace some labour because of its very nature in the short run. A part of the explanation for the structural shift in employment in India from agriculture to services could lie in the availability and use of new technology. The present paper aims to look at the impact of technology change on labour productivity growth and employment growth for the Indian manufacturing and service industry.

Keywords

Employment, Growth, Productivity, Skills, Technology.
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  • Technology, Productivity and Employment: An Empirical Analysis of Indian Industries

Abstract Views: 209  |  PDF Views: 115

Authors

Suresh Chand Aggarwal
Department of Business Economics, University of Delhi, South Campus, New Delhi – 110021, India

Abstract


Since 2000, technology has changed at a tremendous pace and has transformed the face of industry in the entire world. Many among the top Fortune 500 companies, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Uber, Wal-Mart, are all technology driven and are also mainly in the services sector. While opening many new windows for investment and increase in productivity, the new technology is simultaneously disturbing the existing technological complementarities and exerting a lot of pressure on the supply of the matching skill. Many jobs which exist today would disappear tomorrow and many new jobs will get created tomorrow which do not exist today. So there is a simultaneous creation and destruction of jobs and the net impact thus depends upon their respective pace. Skill mismatches are now a common feature in all economies. While new technology is expected to increase productivity of labour and hence employment especially- in the long run, it is also simultaneously expected to displace some labour because of its very nature in the short run. A part of the explanation for the structural shift in employment in India from agriculture to services could lie in the availability and use of new technology. The present paper aims to look at the impact of technology change on labour productivity growth and employment growth for the Indian manufacturing and service industry.

Keywords


Employment, Growth, Productivity, Skills, Technology.

References





DOI: https://doi.org/10.18311/jbt%2F2018%2F21173