PLFS considers a person as unemployed if they are not working, available for work and actively seeking work. In States with lower per capita income and high incidence of poverty, people have compulsion to work for subsistence, which PLFS captures as employed resulting in lower unemployment rate. But, people in Goa can afford to wait for better jobs instead of taking low-paying work or job opportunities in which they have no interest.
Over the decades Goa has created substantial job market comprising labourers, house maids, construction workers, waiters in hotels and other tourism related jobs, blue-collar jobs in industries, municipality workers etc, but they are largely occupied by the people from outside Goa as mostly Goans are not ready to take up such jobs. Goan educated youth may prefer to wait preferably for government jobs or white-collar jobs. PLFS count them as unemployed if they are seeking work but not accepting available jobs. It is also a possibility that they may be engaged in some work or underemployed, but not revealing and prefer to report as unemployed in PLFS surveys. Goa being a tourism bound economy with seasonal volatility, people may report as unemployed even if they work part of the year. Many Goans engage in informal work like small family business, rentals, homestays, freelance tourism activities may not get reported as employed in PLFS.
Many households receive income from abroad. More than 20% of bank deposits constitute NRE deposits amounting to whooping Rs 20,000 crore. Goa has very high government employment rate. About one out of every 15 persons in the population age group of 18 to 60 years is a government employee. Government employment is considered as more secured and relatively stress-free with flexible work environment. Although, more than 1.5 lakh persons are on the live register of employment exchange, registration cannot be equated to unemployment as it comprises already working but underemployed, still pursuing education, self-employed, contract workers and many not actively seeking jobs.
Goa’s unemployment is not a myth but it is a combination of underemployment, skill mismatch and shortage of quality jobs acceptable to aspiring youth. High statistical volatility, population heterogeneity and ability of the people to stay idle make unemployment in Goa look perceivably high or unstable. It is not a sign of economic distress but calls for demand-based employment policy suiting Goan youth. For example, the Mopa Airport Aviation Skill Development Centre (ASDC) could be a model. The Mopa Airport Concession Agreement has mandated the Concessionaire to set up ASDC to impart required skills to local youth to make them employable at the Airport for various types of job opportunities. This has led to significant number of Goans specially from Pernem taluka getting employment at the Airport. In all sectors, similar approach may be followed while approving any business proposal with a pre-condition that Goans need to be trained and employed for all job opportunities clearly defining its implementation mechanism so that it doesn’t remain on paper.
Deeper study is required to understand and address unemployment or underemployment problem of Goa. As an example, it would be worth to study why Goans are missing from Goa’s casinos, in spite of it being provider of white-collar jobs. An employment audit of various industries and establishments may be the need of the hour to understand the extent of Goans employed and employability issues. Presently, it is also possible that information regarding availability of jobs in the private sector may not be reaching the interested youth. Therefore, evolving a real-time centralized job portal exclusively for private sector of Goa by the government and making it mandatory to all the industries and establishments to advertise vacancies on the portal may be explored.
