SOIL Report 2011 - ACCESS Development Services

118 State of India’s Livelihoods Report 2011Figure 5.4: Comparing NSDC and TeamLease projections for incremental employmentSource: NSDC skills gap report, TeamLease Labour Report 2009.the investment and hiring plans of firms,which tend to be uncertain even for the nexttwo years. Ma Foi Randstad, the manpowerglobal, stated that it rarely makes forecastsbeyond two years for its clients, and its MEtSreport, widely accepted as the standard forjob forecasts for India’s corporate sector,makes projections for only a year ahead.To check the validity of the NSDC figures,they can be compared to TeamLease’sattempt at audacious forecasting for incrementalemployment from 2008 to 2025.Figure 5.4 compares the two projections, forthose sectors where definitions were sharedsufficiently to make them comparable.Figure 5.4 shows some glaring differences,which might lead us to question theworth of such forecasts altogether:• Textile and apparel, flagged by NSDC tocontinue as a huge incremental employer(16 million) is seen by TeamLease as agrowth slower (4 million).• NSDC’s bold projection of nearly 10million nurses and health technicians isat odds with TeamLease’s estimate of lessthan half a million.• TeamLease’s estimate for the retail sector,while still high at 9 million, is just a littleover half of NSDC’s projection of 17.5million.• TeamLease is conservative about the twotraditional handcrafting-based sectors,mainly, gems and jewellery and leather(with projections of under 350,000 foreach), while being inexplicably optimisticabout another labour-intensive industry—furniture(at just under 3 million).NSDC is optimistic about the first two(3.5 million for gems and jewellery,4.2 million for leather), but more conservativeabout furniture (just over 0.75million).