Mumbai: Over two-thirds of the country’s blue-collared employees earn less than Rs 15,000 per month, which is below the minimum wage set by the Central Pay Commission, a report said Thursday.
Among the blue-collared workforce, women made Rs 12,398 on average — 19 per cent less than their male colleagues, according to the report by staff attendance and payroll management app SalaryBox.
The SalaryBox report was based on an employee user base of more than 1.1 million people who actively use the platform. Information was collected on their salaries, gender, industry, and locations via the app from January to June 2022.
According to the report, less than 15 per cent of the employee base earns in the range of Rs 20,000-40,000 per month, calling attention to the fact that a vast majority of Indians have difficulties securing a livable wage.
Interestingly, most firms pay wages below the minimum wage set by the Central Pay Commission (CPC), that is Rs 18,000 per month, it noted.
“For a long time, the topic of jobs — or rather, the lack thereof — has dominated India’s economic discourse. While the headline employment or unemployment numbers get a lot of attention, another set of numbers that is equally significant — who gets paid how much — doesn’t get nearly as much attention.
“It is high time that the companies bring in interventions that highlight this huge gap,” SalaryBox CEO and co-founder Nikhil Goel noted.
The report also found that only 27 per cent of the workforce is made up of women.
Employees working at supermarkets, grocery, kirana, general stores as well as those in the garments and textile industries are paid at the lower end of the scale, with an average monthly salary of Rs 8,300, it said.
Logistics and transport, IT software, and tailoring or boutiques pay the most to women, with primary roles being of telecallers, documentation executives and recruitment associates.
“Economic development is still not translating into enough jobs for the yearly influx of educated young people entering the workforce. A much bigger proportion of Indians work in the informal sector, and they have been hit hard in recent months by increasing inflation, particularly in food prices,” Goel added.
The persistent income disparity between men and women exists across all industries, and while workers’ wages have been steadily increasing in numerous sectors, the value allocated to women’s workforce is still undervalued, it added.
Despite the fact that salons, schools, supermarkets and boutiques employ nearly the same number of women and men, the pay gap persists.
In addition to this, as the workforce gets older, the pay difference appears to widen even more, and women’s participation in the labour decreases, the report added.
PTI