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IT is India’s highest-paying sector; manufacturing offers the lowest

Information Technology sector employees get the highest pay in India with a median gross hourly salary of Rs 346.42, while those in the manufacturing sector get paid the least at Rs 254.04, says a report. According to Monster Salary Index (MSI), the IT sector is the highest paying sector in India, but only 57.4 per cent are satisfied with their salary.

BFSI sector comes in second with a median salary of Rs 300.23. The relatively higher remuneration reflects the high level education of workers with 16-17 years of schooling, the report noted. 

"The IT and BFSI sectors have always been among the highly paid in India but it is surprising that over 50 per cent of employees in both these sectors are least satisfied with their salaries," Sanjay Modi, Managing Director of Monster.com India said.

Notwithstanding, the government's focus towards the sector through its Make in India initiative, manufacturing sector is paid the least, as employees in this segment are paid about 9 per cent lesser than the median salary for the entire Indian economy taken together at Rs 279.7.

The findings of the manufacturing sector show that irrespective of the education levels, the salaries are still very low, even for a Master's degree holder, the median hourly salary stands at Rs 260.8, the report noted. Additionally, foreign owned manufacturing companies pay nearly double of what Indian manufacturing firms pay their workers.

"Manufacturing must take off in a big way, if India needs to grow exponentially and transform itself into an industrial economy. The findings of MSI prove that immediate measures are required to rectify the salary standards, especially since this sector is highly people intensive," Modi added.

The report further noted, in the BFSI space, small companies pay an hourly salary of Rs 197.95/hr while large firms pay an hourly average salary of Rs 324.51/hr and bonuses are more common in the IT sector than BFSI and manufacturing.

"In a scenario where salary becomes one of the key factors to attract and retain employees, it is important for companies to very closely analyse the correlation between salaries and employee satisfaction," Modi added.

Meanwhile, trying to instil confidence in the investor community, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday said that manufacturing in the country is picking up and the perception that there is slack in the sector is wrong.

"Manufacturing is actually picking up. The last quarter figure showed that the country's GDP growth will be over 7 per cent. It also revealed that manufacturing is growing over 9 per cent. Actually, the perception is going around in the circle without looking at the figures," she told reporters during the Make in India Week here on Monday.

The investment offers and MoUs that have been signed so far in the Make in India week are an indicator that manufacturing is gaining traction, she asserted. Asked about discrepancies in some of the recently released data and their methodologies to calculate, she said even Kaushik Basu - the World Bank economist and former Chief Economic Advisor - has said "there is absolutely no reason to doubt over the figures which have come out".

"So, I think in this country there can be a lot of discussions about the methodology, the process of getting the numbers and there is no harm in discussing. But of course, ultimately if there is no doubt after the due discussions, we have to settle somewhere and start believing rather than keep the discussions going on," she added.

"At the end of the day, you are not able to sit and work on numbers because you question everything."  Basu had recently said India's GDP numbers are very dependable and there is no "rigging" taking place with regard to data. He was responding to questions surrounding the GDP numbers being put out by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

It has projected a growth rate of 7.6 per cent for the current fiscal, the highest in the last five years. Notably, industrial production declined for the second month, contracting 1.3 per cent in December, mainly due to a drop in manufacturing and capital goods sector.

Factory output as measured by the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) had also declined 3.4 per cent in November. During April-December this fiscal, the industrial output grew 3.1 per cent compared with 2.6 per cent a year earlier.

The decline in December has been primarily because of a massive slump in output of capital goods, a proxy for investor demand which saw a contraction of 19.7 per cent, as against growth of 6.1 per cent in the same month a year ago. The manufacturing sector, which accounts for over 75 per cent of the index, fell 2.4 per cent as against a growth of 4.1 per cent in December 2014.
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