Sikhs on top when it comes to employed workforce in Rajasthan

JAIPUR: The Sikh community in Rajasthan is the 'most employed lot' among all religious groups, with close to 50% of its population employed or working. The data drawn from the Census report 2011 on religion-based workforce in Rajasthan released this week states that Muslim and Jain communities have worst workforce percentage at 36.8% and 33.6% of their total population, respectively.
According to the data, 47.3% Sikhs of their total 8,72,930 population, were found to be working in different sectors of economy.
It explains the reason behind economic independence of Sikhs in Rajasthan. Here, the working population has been divided into three categories - agriculture, artisans, industry and services.
Christians stand next to Sikhs on the workforce parameter.
The community which has less than one lakh members in state has its 45% population working. The high workforce rate is due to high literacy rate among Christians. Surprisingly, Jains who are a business community are a way behind other religious minorities on the workforce parameter. In fact, both Muslims and Jains stand poor in gender equality in terms of workforce.
Just 10% of Jain women were recorded working while 23% of Muslim women were working in key sectors. "Both communities share the grim picture but have different reasons. Jains, known for running family businesses, may have their one or two members come on record as working. They already have a high per capita income. Muslims have a different story. The poor percentage of workforce among men and women is due to high literacy," said Rajiv Gupta, former head of department, sociology, RU. The overall state gender index shows 53% employed males against 35% employed females.
Around 43.5% of state's total 6.85 crore population is engaged in one or the other kind of work. The national average of workforce is 40%.
Hindu population, though it has a significant number of economically poor castes and communities, has a workforce population of 44.3%. It is better than its national average of 41%.
The icing on the cake is that workforce population percentage of Rajasthan is leading among BIMARU states. Uttar Pradesh has the lowest workforce population of 32.9%.