Contract Labor and Establishment Growth in India

India's Industrial Disputes Act (IDA) requires large manufacturing plants to pay substantial costs if they wish to shrink their workforce. Since the early 2000s, these large plants have dramatically increased their use of contract workers who are not subject to these regulatory constraints. Between 2000 and 2015, the contract labor share in non-managerial employment nearly doubled at establishments with more than 100 workers (from 21 to 40 percentage points), while it only increased from 14 to 17 percentage points at establishments with less than 50 workers. Over the same period, the thickness of the right tail of the establishment size distribution in formal Indian manufacturing plants increased, the average product of labor at large plants declined, the job creation rate for large plants increased, and the probability that large plants introduced new products rose. We argue that these changes were caused by the increased adoption of contract labor. In a model of establishment growth subject to firing costs, we show that easing access to contract labor increased TFP in Indian manufacturing by 7.3% since the early 2000s, occurring all through a one-time reduction in misallocation between large and small plants with negligible change in the long-run growth rate.