5/
Are people at least sorting into jobs that best match their education or experience or other characteristics?
Nope.
Most workers earn far less than they could if they were in trajectories that rewarded their characteristics.
A segmented labour market, not one based on sorting.

2/
We tracked 87k workers over 8 time points over 2017-19 using @CMIEIndia data. We use trajectory analysis / finite fixture models to identify the dominant trajectories. Looks like👇🏽

Largest traj: Always self-employed.
2nd: Transition b/w different forms of informal wage work.

How do we make sense of the many transitions across employment arrangements in India’s labour market?

New in World Development, @rosaabraham.bsky.social & I study the trajectories that characterise Indian labour market, & identify 7 dominant ones. What do they look like? 🧵

x.com/surbhikesar/...

Excited to share details about workshop on “Labour, Informal Economy, and Structural Transformation under Post-Colonial Capitalism”, Anush Kapadia & I are organising.

Fantastic scholars join us on June 4-5 June @soasuni.bsky.social, supported by @soaseconomics.bsky.social & New Political Economy.

A fantastic talk by Jonathan Jenner on Labour coercion under colonialism in Kenya. So refreshing and such in-depth archival work.

Read abhorring article on race & caste in today’s Times of India. While yes, there are key diff b/w race & caste, by suggesting that race is simply based on skin colour & caste on conciliation hierarchy, author betrays a lack of understanding social construction of both! 1/3

It was very enriching to present my work on informal economy, surplus labour, & India's economic development at Delhi Economics Society.
Thanks Surajit Das and Prachi Bansal for hosting and to those attending, esp. Prof Barbara Harriss-White, for such an engaging discussion!

At a paddy procurement centre in Jammu, where paddy is being procured by gov for a minimum support price of INR 23/kg while market price for this quality is 19/kg.

Farmers from neighbouring villages transport the produce here to be cleaned, measured, & bought, ensuring a decent min price.

1st conference on the Political Economy of Global South at AUC Cairo. It provided a critical space over the last few days to discuss issues of a (failed) structural transformation, labour, and the neoliberal capitalism in crisis.

Starting reading this upon recommendation from my colleagues/comrades, and have been enjoying it thus far.