The Hon. Mahinda Jayasinghe - Deputy Minister of Labour
Deputy Minister Mahinda Jayasinghe, responding on behalf of the Minister of Labour, provided labour force and public employment statistics, citing the 2023 Labour Force Survey figure of 8.4 million in the labour force, 8.0 million employed, and about 3 million informal sector workers. He set out selected annual figures for formal government and private sector employment, permanent and casual public servants, salary and emolument costs, and pension expenditure up to 2024. He stated that no government institution has prepared a formal 10-year labour force forecast, and that recruitment, pension cost and retiree projections depend on ongoing fiscal, administrative and policy decisions, with detailed projections to be provided once finalized.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Minister of Labour, I provide the following.
¶ 02 (a) (i) Definitionally, the labour force includes those actively seeking employment. According to the 2023 Labour Force Survey, the 15+ population is 17.3 million; of this, the labour force is 8.4 million, with 8.0 million employed. Within this, formal employment (with EPF/ETF and formal contracts) in Government and private sectors is as follows (selected years): - 2019: Government 1,216,549; Private 3,521,695 - 2020: Government 1,183,716; Private 3,411,996 - 2021: Government 1,235,164; Private 3,410,408 - 2022: Government 1,231,788; Private 3,496,636 - 2023: Government 1,168,055; Private 3,561,656 (Note: 2024 survey conducted; data entry ongoing per the Department of Census and Statistics.) Additionally, about 3 million workers are in the informal sector.
¶ 03 (ii) Government servants – permanent and casual (selected years): - 2015: Permanent 1,069,824; Casual 48,596 - 2016: 1,072,724; 40,946 - 2017: 1,078,677; 39,372 - 2018: 1,057,762; 37,787 - 2019: 1,107,793; 36,826 - 2020: 1,076,391; 41,190 - 2021: 1,086,940; 49,302 - 2022: 1,109,761; 45,092 - 2023: 1,057,958; 37,298 - 2024: 1,113,873; [casual figure as per latest compilation]
¶ 04 (iii) Total financial cost of salaries and emoluments (Rs. million): - 2015: 641,811 - 2017: 685,512 - 2018: 723,665 - 2019: 791,159 - 2020: 906,577 - 2021: 939,848 - 2022: 1,057,709 - 2023: 1,047,216 - 2024: 1,113,873
¶ 05 (iv) Total pension expenditure (Rs. million): - 2015: 147,765 - 2016: 163,836 - 2017: 172,684 - 2018: 182,011 - 2019: 202,642 - 2020: 228,682 - 2021: 242,375 - 2022: 288,574 - 2023: 307,875 - 2024: 348,907
¶ 06 (b) (i) No Government institution has produced a formal forecast of the labour force for the next 10 years. However, studies and projections by various international agencies and researchers are used by the Government in policy decisions.
¶ 07 (ii)–(iv) Recruitment intentions, projected pension costs and projected retiree numbers over the next periods are determined by ongoing fiscal, administrative and policy decisions; detailed year-by-year projections will be provided once finalized in the relevant frameworks.
Provenance
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- Hansard, Thursday, 9 January 2025 ·No. 1738229262040729 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
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Cite as: The Hon. Mahinda Jayasinghe - Deputy Minister of Labour. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 9 January 2025. No. 1738229262040729. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/23634