India’s factory employment remains stagnant, even as the government is trying to boost the industrial economy to cope with chronic unemployment or underemployment, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The number of India’s farm workers has grown by around 60 million over the past four years, a shift fueled in part by a food-welfare program that feeds hundreds of millions of people. But many economists expected exactly the opposite for India, and it highlights the challenges that India and foreign companies face in the push toward industrialization. Instead of seeing workers move onto factory floors, India appears instead to be de-industrializing.

Companies are reporting difficulty in scaling up output to meet new orders for logistics-sector expansion and from buyers abroad because they can’t staff up production lines.