Employment Deceleration in the Unorganised Rural Non-Farm Sector in Assam

The aim of this paper is to examine the recent employment trends in the unorganised rural non-farm enterprises (URNFEs) in Assam. The analysis based on the National Sample Survey (NSS) 67th and 73rd quinquennial rounds of enterprise survey data reveals that there has been an absolute decline in employment in the URNFEs in the state during 2010-11 to 2015-16. Much of this decline in employment took place in the services sector, though the other sectors such as, manufacturing and trading also experienced a decline in employment. The growth rate of real output of the URNFEs in the state has also been very slow. The employment elasticity of the URNFEs turned out to be negative and fairly high indicating the failure of the sector to create employment opportunities in the state despite having immense potentiality for it