Job: A job happens when an individual has some work to be done and doesn’t have enough hands but has money to spare. He hires somebody who has hands but needs money. There is NO other basis for a job. A job can not appear or be created just BECAUSE somebody needs a job. Politicians do claim that they will “create” jobs, but this is the most fraudulent of all their claims.
Hiring somebody not because you have some work for him but because he needs a job, and then paying him for no work (because you have no work that needs to be done and that he can do) is not a job but a fraud, and will destroy both, the employer and the “employee”, even if the employer happens to be government.
Now coming back to jobs. Man needs government. A government is the most essential and precious possession of man. And to create government, people need to be hired and government jobs are born. But government has a cost and it can not become bigger than the society/country can afford. Government by definition has to be permanent and therefore those manning it have to have fairly long tenures. So government jobs are “permanent”.
So far so good. But because government jobs are not productive, but a cost, and public who is their employer doesn’t have much say in their remuneration, government employees can not be allowed to pay themselves the aristocratic pay. Their salaries must be slightly less than the counterpart private sector salaries because their jobs are permanent.
But in India it so happened that we became socialists, and therefore “faux equals”. A ratio was decided between salary of the Cabinet Secretary (the highest paid government employee) and his peon.
And so we have reached a point that officers in the government are almost “poorly paid” as compared with their private counterparts, and government peons’ salary has truly defied gravity and literally shot through the roof. We have distorted the salary market. And because politicians need to win elections so they try to recruit more and more people to government, so government now has employees who have no work to do. Even that would not cause much harm to the economy, but these employees in order to justify their employment are always trying to find ways to interfere in the economy, and calling this interference “work”, resulting into paralysis in the economy. They also extort from businesses money in bribes to not interfere in the businesses.
So now we have a situation that fifty lakh youth apply for 50000 constables’ jobs (more or less same pay as government peons), and there are no carpenters, welders, masons and other artisans available for private sector (all these jobs pay higher money but being in private are not “permanent” and “respectable”.)
And at officer level, once among the most cherished and glamourous government jobs- army and railway - (lower than only IAS and few other Civil services jobs in preference)- are no longer the better or even much lower choice.
To sum, do not go against the market. Distorting salaries in the service of socialism, paying too low to government officers and too high to government peons is distortion of the salary market and will always have the same consequences as any forced distortion of market has, the consequences we are living through now. And justification for a job MUST remain a work to be done, not somebody’s need for a job.
There will always be work. If all labour laws are abolished, and likewise, all regulation of businesses is stopped, we all will always have jobs which will continue to become better and better. Because the living itself daily creates work.
We do not have enough jobs because we do not have enough industries and services because we have socialism that makes private enterprises impossible. And if we will continue to hold the government sine cures respectable while demonising businessmen, nobody will try to set up businesses in any case.