Railway and Indian Army among Top 10 Biggest Employers in the World

Indian Military Veterans

Railway and Indian Army among Top 10 Biggest Employers in the World as per World Economic Forum – Combined Strength of Central Government Employees (including Railways) of 30.84 lakh (3.84 Million) ignored in this report

As per news media reports quoting the statistics released by World Economic Forum, Employees Strength of Indian Railways and Indian Army are among top 10 employers in the world. While Railways has employed as many as 1.4 Million (14 lakh) employees and positioned in Rank 8 biggest Employer in the world, Indian Army is at Rank 9 among Top 10 Biggest Employers in the World with Army Personnel strength of 1.3 Million (13 lakh).

Interestingly, the combined strength of Central Government Employees in India (including Railway Employees) is around 30.50 lakh as per statistics presented in Parliament in 2014.

Click here to check the report on Total Stength of Central Government Employees in India presented in Parliament

Even after excluding Railway Employee strength in the figure released by Govt in 2014, total number of central government employees including defence civilian employees is to the extent of 16.80 lakh (1.6 Million). But combined employee strength of all Ministries of Central Government has not been taken in to account in the survey by World Economic Forum.

Click here to get Central Government Employees census as on March 2011 and released in April 2014 by Ministry of Labour and Employment

Ministry wise Central Government Employees Strength (as per Census 2011)

Sl. No.	Ministry	Number of regular Employees	% age to the total
1	2	3	4
1.	Communications & IT	2,16,490	7.01
2.	Defence (Civilian)	3,75,309	12.16
3.	Finance	1,03,927	3.37
4.	Home Affairs	8,01,092	25.95
5.	Railways	13,28,199	43.02
6.	Others	2,62,261	8.49
TOTAL		30,87,278	100.00

According to a research published by the World Economic Forum, the US Department of Defense is the world’s biggest employer which claims over 3.2 million employees on its roster.

Second is People’s Liberation Army (the Chinese military) with 2.3 million, and in third is the US supermarket giant Walmart with 2.1 million workers, the report said, adding that “…175,000 of Walmart’s staff work for UK supermarket chain, Asda”.

McDonald’s is the 4th biggest employer with 1.9 million employees, however, as the majority of its restaurants are franchises, this figure falls to 4,20,000 when they are excluded, the report said.

UK’s National Health Service was ranked at the 5th place, with 1.7 million employees, followed by state-run China National Petroleum Corporation with 1.6 million.

Another Chinese company, the State Grid Corporation of China was ranked 7th with 1.5 million.

Hon Hai Precision Factory (better known as the electronics manufacturer Foxconn) comes in at 10th place with 1.2 million people.

Source: 1. Census 2011

2. Times of India

3. Wikipedia