India provisionally created 46.7 million jobs in the financial year ended March 2024, taking the country's total employment to 643.3 million, a Reserve Bank of India report showed on Monday.
The country's employment growth rate stood at 6 per cent in that fiscal year, versus 3.2 per cent in the previous fiscal year, the RBI's report on measuring industry level productivity and employment showed.
The report, a routine release from the central bank, has traditionally only shown historical numbers. On Monday, however, the central bank said it is attempting a provisional estimate of productivity for the total economy for the first time for the financial year 2023/24 based on available information.
The release of the data follows a Citibank report last week which said growth of close to 7 per cent will only create 8 million to 9 million jobs in India, short of the 11 million to 12 million needed.
"Even 7 per cent GDP growth might not be able to fulfil the job requirement over the next decade," Citi's chief India economist Samiran Chakraborty wrote in the note.
In a separate statement, the federal labour department too countered Citi's report to say its estimates suggest an average of over 20 million employment opportunities per year were created between 2017-18 to 2021-22.